


To Hell with Our Good Name

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Arranged Marriage, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, My porn developed plot and ran away from me, Non canon age difference, Smut, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-08 13:31:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Patrick Stump — Marquess of Worcester and heir to the Dukedom of Beaufort — is a man of few needs. Fine whiskey, decent horses and excellent tailoring are more than sufficient. Oh, and his stable master, Peter Lewis. Unfortunately for Patrick, inheriting his title comes with certain conditions.And none of them involve Peter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laudanum_cafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_cafe/gifts).



> Happy Friday, campers!
> 
> So, this is a birthday gift for the wonderful, the unique, the amazing and unbelievably fantastic laudanum_cafe. My dear, somehow your porn acquired 60k words of plot, I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> I started writing this in February. _February_! Do you guys have _any idea_ how hard it's been to keep this under wraps for that long?
> 
> The artwork is by the amazing [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) and you can check out more of her (utterly amazing) artwork [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/) Go and follow her, I promise you won't regret it!
> 
> Last but not least, a massive thank you to the_chaotic_panda and Semi_Sweet for betaing and allowing me to kick ideas off them over and over and over again.
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155712566@N06/40363846420/) [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155712566@N06/41270064705/in/photostream/)

They’re searching for him.

He can hear them just outside, the voices twisting and mingling together in a sharp, repetitive scratch of _“Worcester? Worcester? Come out at once!”_

He doesn’t want to be Worcester. He just wants to be Patrick.

He curls a little closer to the warm stone of the hayloft wall, the tickle and scratch in his chest reminding him that he shouldn’t be so closely acquainting himself with the dust caught amongst the straw at his feet. He scuffs his boots through it defiantly, chokes on a wheezing cough and curses his own stupidity.

He hears it then, the scrape and thud of footsteps on the cobbles below, the unmistakable creak of someone scampering up the ladder to his left. His eyes sting — the dust, that’s all it is, the only reason they’re red-rimmed and wet — and he scrubs them with balled fists.

“Patrick?” A cloth cap greets him as he opens his eyes to a squint, lower lip nipped hard between his teeth to keep it from trembling. The cap is soon joined by eyes the same colour as the brasses in the tack room and the shine of a toothsome grin. Peter Lewis knows him — and his hiding places — far too well. “I knew it was you.”

“Go _away,_ Peter,” he snaps, irritated at the loss of privacy, at the way his friend presumes to sit so close to him, the way he takes his hand with a gentle squeeze. Young gentlemen do _not_ need to hold hands with their friends. He squeezes back anyway.

“They’re looking for you, you know,” Peter informs him,with that cut-glass sharpness to his voice that speaks of elocution lessons taken with Patrick’s governess. In truth, Patrick has no idea why the exotic little boy with his golden skin and copper-bright eyes was ever sent from the small cottage on the estate to share his education. Patrick knows, with no brothers or sisters to play with, that he enjoys the company. “Won’t you come out? If you come along at once, your father mightn’t be quite so angry…”

“I won’t go,” Patrick shakes his head, chin tilted defiantly as his eyes sting once more, his vision blurring. “This straw is… _silly!_ Why is it so _dusty?”_

Peter shifts closer, slings a skinny arm around Patrick’s skinny shoulders and rests his cheek on top of the golden crown of Patrick’s hair. His mother says he has beautiful hair. He’ll miss his mother a lot.

“Come now,” Peter soothes, with the authority of someone a mere year older than Patrick, why,  Peter is practically a young man. “You’re not a coward, are you?”

Patrick shakes his head, bites his lip slightly tighter, squeezes Peter’s hand just a modicum more firmly.

“I — I shall miss you,” he stammers. His father has promised him that Eton isn’t so far away, that he can come home for Christmas at Badminton House. “Terribly so.”

“And I’ll miss _you,”_ Peter smiles though his eyes seem a little damp. He’s to be sent to the Gymnasium St Augustine in Saxony to continue his education until his fourteenth birthday, then to the stables at Wolfsburg, apprenticed to the stable master there. “You… You’ll be back for Christmas, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Patrick says softly, willing to make believe for a moment that Peter will be, too. “Peter? Are — are you nervous?”

Peter takes a long breath, holds it in his lungs for a moment then gusts a sigh. Patrick’s hand feels hot and slightly damp against Peter’s as he looks at him from the corner of his eye, “Yes.”

“Me too.” Patrick is lying, he’s utterly terrified. He has never spent so much as a single night under a roof not shared by his parents. Still, at least other boys will be starting school at the same time, he won’t be completely alone. “I hope we make new friends, I — I don’t want to be lonely.”

“Yes,” Peter whispers once more, mouth turned down slightly at the edges, eyes grim with gloomy contemplation. Peter looks up after a moment with a forced smile. “We’ll do splendidly, you and I.”

As the shouts of his name outside grow louder, closer and ever more frantic, Patrick supposes he doesn’t have much of a choice but to find out.

Pete rises to his feet, offers the warmth of his hand to Patrick once more to haul him upright. He takes a moment to dust away the straw that clings to Patrick’s trousers. Satisfied he’s clean, he takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes quickly at Patrick’s eyes, muttering under his breath, “The straw is a menace.”

“Look at you, little Patrick,” he says, voice brimmed with brotherly affection.

“I’m barely a summer younger than you,” Patrick retorts, poking out his tongue. “Don’t baby me, Peter.”

“Of course not,” Peter laughs, sharp and braying, teeth impossibly white against the tan of his skin. He falters for a moment as they pause at the top of the ladder. “I shan’t tell them you were crying.”

“Thank you,” Patrick takes a final sniff, and straightens his jacket. “I shan’t tell them you were, either.”

By the time he’s kissed and hugged and bundled into the carriage alongside his nanny, by the time the coachman has mounted the box and gathered the reins, by the time the carriage has rolled its way down the winding driveway that leads to the grand front gates, Peter has vanished. Patrick won’t shed a tear in front of anyone else but he does think it would have been nice of his only friend to say goodbye.  

As they pass through the gates he sees him. Red-faced and damp with sweat from sprinting over the fields, hand raised in a mock salute and golden grin beamed straight at Patrick.

Patrick waves frantically though his nanny doesn’t approve, knocks at the glass with little fists and shouts loud enough that he hopes he can be heard from the roadside.

“Goodbye, Peter! See you at Christmas!”

~*~

Patrick doesn’t see Peter that Christmas. In fact, Patrick doesn’t see him at all over the course of his time at Eton. Summers are busy in Saxony, or so the brief letters they exchange for a short time seem to suggest. Christmas is less frantic but Peter spends it in the cottage with his mother whilst Patrick is dragged to balls and parties and spends increasing lengths of time at the house in London. What Patrick does see of Peter, he sees from a distance that he realises with age and maturity is a result of their different standing in life. The son of a Duke does not fraternise with the help, no matter who fathered that particular member of staff.

~*~

At eighteen years old Patrick is delaying his father’s inevitable nagging that he do something worthwhile with his time by taking a degree in Philosophy at Oxford. He returns home from university at least mildly irritated that he’s being forced to waste his time out in the sticks rather than at some achingly fashionable party in London. He opted to take the train, for ease and because the thought of a two day coach journey made him feel quite queasy but now, standing on the station platform and squinting uncertainly down the road, he wonders if perhaps a coach might have been more reliable.

He stamps his feet in his boots, flexes frozen fingers clad in leather gloves and pushed into the pockets of his overcoat. Even in layers of wool and cashmere, even under the press of his hat he’s still bloody freezing. He’s practising the cutting speech he’ll deliver to the coachman when he eventually decides to show his face, planning each put down and reminder of rank as he hears the faint thud of trotting hooves in the near distance and drawing closer.

The coach and outrageously mismatched pair — a grey and a chestnut, his father would be horrified — that rounds the corner is quite the nicest sight Patrick has seen all year, the promise of blankets and warmth within and the smug reminder that the coachman will have to remain out in the cold. That will teach him to linger long enough to allow it to start snowing.

It’s difficult to catch the eye of the coachman as he draws to a halt in front of Patrick, the carriage horses steaming gently in the frigid air. Patrick feels his brows draw in annoyance — they shouldn’t have been driven hard enough to sweat in this weather. The coachman hops down from the carriage with a lithe grace that seems almost familiar but little of him is visible under the bulk of his coat, the wrap of his scarf and the brim of his top hat. He tips his hat and ducks his head with easy formality and hurries to open the carriage door as Patrick follows him with a curious frown; that isn’t Trohman.

 _“Peter?”_ he exclaims in surprise as his eyes meet with honeyed gold, crinkled at the edges with a smile. “Is that — how the _devil_ have you been, good man?”

“My Lord,” Peter replies with a twinkle of copper eyes that shine with mirth. There’s the faintest hint of an accent to his voice, something that was never there before. “My apologies for leaving you here for so long. Aelius pulled up lame, tricky old boy that he is, didn’t want to risk him for the sake of a week’s box rest. I hope you weren’t too worried that we’d forgotten you.”

“No, not at all,” Patrick is bluff and bluster as he forgets the dressing down he planned so meticulously in favour of childish excitement at the sight of his old friend. “How was Saxony? I suppose it was a revelation to have someone to practise that blasted language with who had half a hope of speaking it.”

Pete chuckles as Patrick climbs into the warmth of the coach, no doubt recalling the days they spent after Pete’s lessons, practising the foreign tongue that seemed so thrillingly secret. There’s no second coachman, no chance of asking Pete to join him under the furs to talk and catch up. He pulls himself up short; that would never do.

“Nonsense, sir,” there’s impish humour to his tone that Patrick suspects isn’t presented to his father. “You always were quite the linguist. Come now, get beneath the furs, you’re frozen.”

Peter struggles with his scarf for a moment, tugging it down to allow him to speak more easily and Patrick immediately wishes he would put it back. The childish line of his jaw that Patrick remembers is now sharply angled and darkened with the threat of a shadow of stubble, his nose is strong and straight and Patrick is having a difficult time not imagining it tucked into the crook of his neck. His eyes are the same as Patrick remembers — swirling depths of polished amber that twinkle with knowing — but those _lips_ , plush and plump and shining damp with the sweep of his tongue. Patrick _wants_ those lips and his neckcloth suddenly feels rather too tight as he swallows awkwardly.

Peter is now beautiful and Patrick isn’t sure what to do with this development.

He sits, stiff and uncomfortably straight in the back of the carriage, biting off the squeak as Peter smooths a blanket over his knees. Patrick is no untouched virgin — locked in a boarding school with nothing but cock or Latin prep to pass the evenings has seen to that well enough — but he still flushes humiliatingly pink as Peter’s hand brushes a shade too close to the crotch of his trousers. Peter smiles, charming and lovely, all friendly cheer and without a hint of the flirtation that Patrick suddenly desperately wants as he steps back down to the road.

“It’s good to see you again, Peter,” Patrick volunteers shyly before the door can close, heart beating bruises into his ribcage as Peter’s smile widens.

“And you, my Lord.” Patrick _hates_ that, _hates_ his title tripping from those lush lips when he wants his _name_. He wants it whispered, hot breath on his neck and teeth against his skin, wants it as work-rough hands stroke him insensible with need.

“You may call me Patrick,” he offers grandly. “For old time’s sake.”

“Ah, little Patrick,” Peter’s chuckle is lost in the tuck and wind of his scarf, snowflakes catching in the dark of his lashes. By God, but he’s pretty, sparkling with playfulness and tease in the instant before he closes the carriage door. “Sie dürfen mich Pete nennen.”

_You may call me Pete._

Patrick is enchanted by the hail back to the secrets of their childhood and smiles a little, warmed through though his hands are still chilled.

He is decidedly less enamoured that evening when he makes his way to the stables. Tipsy on too much of his father’s brandy and desperate with the need to see Peter — no, _Pete_ — once more, he’s startled, heart a merry throb against his ribs when he finds rather more of him on display than he anticipated.

Pete has her pressed to the stable wall, Patrick doesn’t know her name, just a maid he’s seen about the house, a caramel hand under the hitched-high hem of her skirt. Pete’s shirt is unbuttoned to his waist, so much warm skin begging to be touched and a curious flash of darkness below his navel. Patrick wants to cry with jealousy but settles for clearing his throat with sharp authority.

“My Lord!” she exclaims in a shriek — as well she might — suitably embarrassed as she fumbles with her skirt. Pete grins, not at Patrick, not at the girl, somewhere over them both, the gesture tinged with something secretive and knowing. “I — we didn’t mean any harm, it’s just…”

“You may leave,” Patrick informs her, stiff with formality. She takes her leave gladly as Pete lounges against the wall, unwilling to straighten his spine or button his shirt even for his master. Patrick steps closer. “You.”

“Me?” Pete’s nipples are dark, Patrick notices, not like the pink pebbles possessed by that idiot Beckett at school. No, they’re more like Saporta’s, the enigmatic son of the Marqués of Almazán, two years above Patrick and long since returned to Madrid. Patrick aches to lick over them, to play his tongue against them until they’re hard and tight and Pete is writhing and desperate.

“You,” he repeats, stopping short against a stable door and doing little to hide the want in his eyes. Still, he won’t do anything more, he’s not the sort to force a servant to his bed. Bought compliance feels a step too far, a sour taste to sully the encounter. “Suppose you get her in the family way. Then what? My father is down a maid and you have three mouths to feed from your wages.”

“Fancy that,” merriment sparkles in Pete’s eyes, the lamplight flickering in their depths as he crosses one lean leg in front of the other. “Perhaps I should… find pleasure in ways that don’t have such terrible consequences.”

Patrick finds he has no response beyond the widening of his eyes as Pete moves even closer. He smells of sweat and horsehair, of leather and shaving soap under the top notes of warm skin and the dizzying rush of arousal. Pete is close enough to generate heat, the warmth of his skin burning through Patrick’s jacket as he pauses, lips still quirked into that dangerous grin.

“My Lord?” Pete asks softly, mouth near enough that Patrick could kiss him with barely any effort at all. The unspoken part of the question shimmers between them, caught in the heat of their bodies.

“Patrick,” he corrects softly but he nods in answer, eyes fluttering closed as Pete’s mouth — gently, hesitantly — touches his.

He would like to say that fire races across his skin, that he sees explosions, the crash of shooting stars and the towering wonder of celestial beings behind his closed eyelids as Pete’s mouth works soft and sweet against his own. But that would be a lie, though he feels undeniably warm and misted with something pleasant that gathers in his chest before flooding down into his stomach, curling sweet, soft and lovely beneath his heart. Pete tastes of the beer he no doubt drank with his supper, the hops mingling with the yeast tang of bread. There’s something else there, something decadent and delicious that has Patrick sweeping his tongue against the roof of Pete’s mouth, swallowing the moan it elicits as he brings their bodies together.

Pete has quite the softest lips he’s ever tasted.

Pete shifts. Patrick, with his hands clasped to Pete’s shoulders, can feel the tense and flex of his arm rising, the shifting whisper of air as Pete moves to cup his cheek. He jolts away, breathing hard, eyes wide as he flinches back from the touch.

“Don’t,” he says, sharp with rebuke that draws Pete’s lips from smile-soft to a line of confusion. “Not that hand. When you — she was. Don’t.”

Patrick blushes and feels foolish but he can’t kiss Pete, can’t let Pete touch his face knowing his fingers are sticky with the desire of someone else. Pete smiles, reassuringly apologetic as he ducks his head to brush a chaste kiss to the corner of Patrick’s lips.

“Perhaps another time?” Pete says, disappointment clouding his eyes.

“Yes,” Patrick nods in a rush, eager and wanting and achingly desperate as he leans his chest to Pete’s. “Soon. Swear it?”

“Name your time,” Pete smiles, reaching for Patrick once more until he remembers and tucks the hand into his pocket. “Your place. Fucking hell, Patrick, I don’t think you understand the effect you’re having on me…”

“I don’t know.” Patrick doesn’t want it to fall from his lips as a whine, doesn’t want to sound like a petulant little boy when Pete is now clearly a man. It’s deliciously thrilling to imagine that he — soft with childish puppy fat — could have anything even resembling an _effect_ on Pete. Handsome, hard-bodied with work, olive-skinned Pete. He thinks, or tries to, picking through the jumble of scattered nonsense for coherent thought, head cocked as he considers. “New Year. They’ll be drunk enough that no one will notice if I leave… Meet me here at ten.”

“Of course.” Patrick has no idea why his heart hammers wildly as he turns on his heel with a curt nod and stumbles, lust-drunk, over the cobbles. He pauses as Pete calls after him, a glance thrown over his shoulder to find him, arms crossed and bathed golden in flickering lamplight. “Goodnight, sir.”

 _“Patrick,”_ he corrects with a grin. “Goodnight, _Lewis.”_

It’s the longest conversation they’ve held in eight years.

~*~

Come New Year’s Eve, when he follows Pete to a small set of rooms above the coach house, he fears his heart might explode in his chest. He’s never known anything but fumbled groping in dark dormitory rooms and touches heated with desperation burned into his skin. He’s never been slowly undressed with the lamp burning brightly and the fire in the grate casting his skin in flicking orange and gold. He’s never been touched in the way Pete sees fit, never felt the trail of warm lips over revealed skin as buttons are loosened and laces untied.

He reciprocates though, pausing at the lacing of Pete’s undergarments to press the tips of his fingers to the ink etched below Pete’s navel. A skull, intricately captured and flanked with raven’s wings, quite beautiful in a macabre sort of way. He kisses it softly, licks over it and finds himself almost disappointed that it tastes and feels no different to the unmarred copper silk surrounding it, although he adores the moan of approval that rolls from Pete’s lips and the delicate arch of his hips.

Pete’s cock is hard under the rough linen; gorged thick and sticky-tipped as Patrick eases them away and takes the flushed-hot length of him into his hand. Pete is gentle, hands framing Patrick’s face as he takes him in, the rock of his hips taut with restraint. This isn’t the first time Patrick’s done this — not even the hundred-and-first — but if Pete wishes to pretend then Patrick is happy to indulge him. When he pulls away, Pete shuddering on the brink of ecstasy — _Oh, Patrick, your mouth! Your fucking mouth! —_ the taste of salt-musk skin clings to his lips and tongue.

Pete teases him in ways he’s never been able to imagine before; a warm, wet mouth and lotion-slicked fingers tender and careful as he finds maddening spots of bliss on Patrick’s body. Finally, when Patrick is aching and desperate, he rolls to his hands and knees and presents Pete with the curve of his arse.

“No,” Pete murmurs from behind him, a kiss brushed to the nape of his neck.

“Yes,” Patrick counters, fingers fisted into the counterpane until they cramp. “Do it. Fuck me.”

“Not like that,” Pete guides him gently, laying back on the mattress and urging Patrick to straddle his hips, tender hands brushing the errant fall of Patrick’s hair from his eyes. “Like this. Let me look at you.”

Patrick thinks he might be dying as he slides down onto the heated pillar of Pete’s blood-dark cock, hips rocking in the rhythm he knows so well, hand framed around the leaking length of his own prick. He bites his lip, loses his cries in the snag of plump flesh caught tight between his teeth as Pete does something indescribable inside of him that shudders ecstasy down his spine.

The first time he comes he fears it may turn him blind, his vision darkening and everything receding but for the bite of crimson crescents into his hips. They go again when they’ve recovered and more after that until Patrick is bruised with it, his thighs a mess of rose water lotion and cooling come.

When they’re finally sated, when his cock is raw and tender with overwhelming sensation, he collapses to Pete’s sheets and into the stains of mingled sweat and come. He leans back into the solid warmth of Pete’s chest and accepts the tangle of arms around his waist, at once at home in the unfamiliar warmth of a tender embrace. No one has ever held him close to them afterwards, gentle fingers carding through sweat-soaked hair and lips tracing heated patterns into his skin.

Everything aches deliciously, the burning stretch in his thighs, the tenderness of his scalp where Pete’s fingers have tangled in his hair, the dull and decadent throb between his cheeks, all layered under the tingling warmth of his orgasm. Pete smells of Patrick now, of Patrick’s sweat, his skin and come. He raises Pete’s hand and brushes a soft kiss to the knuckles.

When he whispers to Pete, lips soft in the velvet smooth of darkness now the lamps have dimmed and the fire burned low, he intends for it to sound grand and pompous. It’s his intention to demonstrate authority rather than need. But when it slips from his lips as Pete’s hand presses to the flush of his backside, his voice becomes breathy with hope, “That was... rather wonderful.”

“Yes, it was,” Pete agrees, the softening length of his cock still buried inside of Patrick. “You’re my favourite, I think I shall keep you.”

Patrick falls in love for the first time — the _only_ time — in that very moment.

~*~

“Steady, steady,” Patrick soothes softly, fingers twisted into the dark hair cast with copper under the flickering stutter of the gaslight. “Steady on, old boy…”

A whinny brays out through the stable block, the answering snicker of the mares nearby. Patrick runs his hands over the solid press of muscular shoulders, checks clean legs bottomed with socks that gleam white with chalk and good grooming. Seventeen hands of pure thoroughbred muscle pushes back against him, the velvet soft of an enthusiastic muzzle nuzzling the pockets of his breeches for the sugar lumps he sneaks from the kitchens.

“Fine animal,” he proclaims gently, clapping a hand to a well-muscled neck as Pete breathes in the smell of sweat and horsehair. “Beautiful muscle tone, the _strength_ in those legs is magnificent, wonderful bone structure, mane could do with tidying up but it’s a small matter,” he pauses and flicks a wicked smile loaded with filthy intent at Pete. “The horse isn’t bad, either.”

Pete’s grins in the gloom, glowing bright and dangerous as he smooths a golden hand down the curve of the stallion’s neck, “I knew you’d approve.”

“Yes, quite,” Patrick murmurs. “And how much did he cost me?”

“Two hundred guineas, sir.”

“Two hundred?” Patrick chuckles softly around a low whistle. Really, he shouldn’t let that _sir_ slide but Pete knows the things he has planned for the evening make it seem silly to argue over the use of an improper title. “Father will be scandalised.”

“I’d stake my reputation on him being worth double,” Pete smiles, eyes drawn to the plump pillow of Patrick’s arse under his breeches. “Did you have a name for him?”

“Have you heard of the Satyricon?” Patrick begins conversationally, feeding a sugar lump to the stallion with a smile. “It’s quite marvellous. Damn near the only thing in Latin lessons that caught my attention. I shall read it to you one of these days, Peter.”

“I’ve studied it myself,” Pete replies, the catch of amusement sharp in his voice as they leave the loose box, kicking straw from their boots. He recalls the Satyricon quite well, leafing through the pages eagerly as a boy to read the tales of Encolpius and Giton. Master and servant and lovers both. Pete reaches up with a fond smile, carefully frees a wisp of hay from Patrick’s hair and lets it flutter to the floor. “And my Latin is _much_ better than yours. As you are well aware, sir.”

“Ah, yes,” Patrick catches him by a handful of his crisp, white shirt and pushes him backwards into the tack room until he bumps to a halt against the saddle stand. “Wonderful! I’ll have you read it to me in that case.”

If there is one thing Patrick – Marquess of Worcester and heir to the Dukedom of Beaufort to grant him his full and proper title – can’t resist, it’s the strength and power of something untamed. Hurling himself across open country on the back of a barely broken stallion, steeplechasing by silvered moonlight across the moors or sinking to his knees in front of his stable master. All seem to spark the same fire in his blood and heat his lungs with the same haze of euphoria. Pete blinks at him coquettishly, flutters the kind of eyelashes that he knows would look well on a woman and hooks his fingers into the waist of Patrick’s breeches.

Their mouths meet, sweet and tasting, tongues a messy tangle of desire as he cups the angular line of Pete’s jaw in both hands. Pete’s fingers continue their quest into Patrick’s breeches, buttons ripped open in his haste to wrap the swollen length of Patrick’s prick in the warm grasp of his roughened palm. He pauses, lips a suggestion of damp heat against Patrick’s as he whispers, eyes twinkling merriment in the low glow of the lamplight.

“Are you taking advantage of me, my Lord?”

Patrick’s laughter is as sweetly intoxicating as the gin they sell in the village public house, as rich and decadent as cream as he drags Pete tight against him. His cock is hot under Pete’s palm, the shaft satin-smooth and pushed up flush within the confines of his breeches, his lust-stuttering hips making rhythm with the pull of Pete’s hand. He whispers curses, the foulest words from the angelic curve of that captivating lower lip. Pete leans closer, sucks it between his own and bites down softly as Patrick fucks into his fist with a wanting whimper.

“I could do more,” Pete offers, promises dropped to shimmer like pearls between them. “I could get on my knees for you, suck you insensible then bend you over the saddle rack and fuck you until you can’t walk. Would you like that?”

“Bloody hell, Peter,” Patrick groans, legs spread as Pete’s fingers wander, as he pushes back to trace the rim of Patrick’s hole with a fingertip. “Just… do _something_ , would you?”

Pete knows with a thrill of possession that Patrick would let him do all of that and more, anything Pete asks, any whim or indulgence entertained. For a night at least, an hour, a stretch of time stolen from the reality of Patrick’s duty to his house and Pete’s station as stable master. Merely a servant, he would do well to remember it, but right now, caught in the glitter-gleam of blue-shaded-green-shaded-gold, all he can do is grin that foolish grin Patrick inspires and incline his head towards the hay loft.

“Shall we?” he prompts with a final stroke of Patrick’s pretty, pink prick.

“Bring the crop,” Patrick is already gone, twisting away with unbuttoned breeches and an untucked shirt, away up the stairs in an instant as Pete fumbles for a lamp, for the crop, his own cock hard and throbbing in the restraint of his breeches.  

By the time he’s climbed the stairs, Patrick is stripped bare but for his boots, calves bound in butter-soft leather, cuffed and buttoned just short of stocky, muscled thighs. He leans casually over a hay bale, mocking smirk tossed back over his shoulder, “Did you lose your way, Lewis?”

Pete smiles, stooping to retrieve the length of linen  from atop Patrick’s hastily abandoned clothing, threading the cool press of it through his fingers as he moves to kneel at Patrick’s hip.

“Hands, my love,” Pete whispers softly. Patrick obeys, hands pressed behind his back with the wrists crossed – for good luck? – the delicate threading of pale blue veins visible through porcelain pale skin. “Good boy.”

Pete crosses and threads the stretch of the neckcloth over and around Patrick’s wrists, binding him tight enough that it would bite into his skin should he struggle. Patrick whimpers, muscles in his forearms corded tight as he tenses against his bonds, shuddering with the breath pulled in through his nose. Pete caresses his cheek, palm rough against the smooth of his skin, thumb pressing between his lips and tracing the tip of his tongue. Patrick sucks, lips pouted soft around the push of Pete’s thumb, eyes fluttered behind the golden fringe of his lashes as he blinks up innocently.

“Beautiful,” Pete murmurs and means it, the glow of Patrick’s skin like alabaster, like unblemished snow as he kneels over the hay bale, legs spread in wanton invitation.

“Oh, Peter,” he breathes, soft as air as his eyes loll closed, and he leans forward, presenting the plush softness of his backside for Pete’s inspection. So much delightful, unmarked skin, the roundness of his cheeks a devilish temptation. Pete’s hands shake only a little as he reaches for the riding crop, leather bound and capped with silver; it feels hot enough to sear his palm as he wraps his hand around it, shivers under the weight of Patrick’s gaze as he cracks it down against the length of his own thigh.

Patrick jumps, breath hitching in a buzz of nervous excitement, eyes falling closed as he rests his cheek against the hay and relaxes with a sigh. This is what he craves – Pete isn’t a fool – the thump of his heartbeat against his ribs, the way his lungs expand and contract in that blissful place between panic and pleasure. Slowly, Pete trails the tress of the whip against the length of Patrick’s inner thigh, following the flow of the curve of his buttock, down to his knee as Patrick shivers his delight into a low hum.

“Further apart, if it’s not too much trouble,” Pete smiles as Patrick complies, shuffling his knees apart and exposing the swell of his balls, his cock trapped between the bale and his stomach. “Excellent. Ah, Patrick, if you could see what I can see right now.”

He flickers the tip of the crop against the tender stretch of Patrick’s perineum, just the briefest kiss of cool leather to heated skin that tears a groan from the plush-plump of Patrick’s barely parted lips. Pete’s smile widens as he presses it through the cleft of Patrick’s arse, finishing with the flourish of a soft smack to his left buttock. It’s a hint of sensation to the rose-flush glow of Patrick’s skin, not enough to leave even the faintest mark. Patrick growls softly.

“It’s not gentlemanly to tease,” Patrick grits between ground  teeth, muscles flexing and extending as he clenches and unclenches his fingers over and over. Pete leans down, lips close enough that they brush the satin softness of Patrick’s earlobe, close enough to feel the heat that radiates from him but careful not to let skin touch.

“Oh, love,” he adores how Patrick shudders beneath him, the shimmer of a pebble dashing across the lake, “have you forgotten? I’m not a gentleman…”

He winds the tress in maddeningly meaningless patterns over the curve of Patrick’s arse, teasing it lightly along the valley of his spine, spanning it over the breadth of those pale shoulders, dappled with the scatter of sun-gold freckles. Each muscle in Patrick’s body draws perfectly tense, the quiver of a notched arrow on a drawn bow, his breathing ragged and desperate as Pete trails the smooth tag of cool leather over the tightened tuck of Patrick’s balls.

“Damn it all, Lewis,” Patrick’s teeth are clenched, jaw stiff and eyes narrowed to slits of summer sky as he scowls back over his shoulder. “Bloody well get on with it.”

It earns him nothing more than a chuckle, dark as winding smoke as Pete taps the leather-flick tip of the whip with infuriating lightness against the cream-pale stretch of Patrick’s thigh, “Now, now. Patience is virtuous.”

“And torment is sinful, you — ” Patrick retorts, any further argument lost in a strangled cry as Pete brings the crop down hard across the rounded smoothness of those milk-pale cheeks.

The crimson shadow of the lash stands out — starkly, shockingly beautiful — against the alabaster perfection of Patrick’s skin. He slumps with an exhale, a moan singing from between his lips as his eyes drift closed and each tense-taut line of his spine relaxes.

“Fuck.” His voice is no more than a raw breath of noise over lips bitten to flush soreness. Pete leans down once more, trails his tongue slowly over the heat of the welt, along the pale run of Patrick’s back and over the delicate shell of his ear. “Oh, fuck it all…”

“One more word,” Pete warns, sweet with deceptive tenderness. “A single breath more from you, my love, and I’ll gag you. Or perhaps I’ll leave you here for the stable lads to find… would you like that?”

Patrick grins around the swollen flush of his plump lower lip caught hard between his teeth. His eyes are dewed with diamonds, glittering in the flickering light of the lamp behind them, tracing the clenching grasp of Pete’s fist around the crop.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Patrick glows with the challenge of it, eyebrow raised and jaw tilted in defiance, that maddening smirk curling the corners of his lips.

Pete brings the crop down hard enough that it whistles through the air, the crack of it against the back of Patrick’s thighs almost shocking. Patrick draws taut, spine stiff and straight as his eyes and mouth spring wide, a vision of ecstasy as he tries to press into the boldly brilliant sharpness of it whilst simultaneously twisting away. The second mark stands bold against his skin, almost perfectly perpendicular with the first, glowing blood-bright and heated. Oh, but Pete knows _exactly_ how to do this.

Patrick hisses, teeth clenched and head bowed as he trembles against the bonds that hold him so securely. There’s ruby there, chafed skin spoiling the wonderful porcelain of his wrists, each sharp jerk of his arms punished with the bind and rub of linen against soft skin. Pete has never presumed to understand this craving that Patrick feels for pain, for loss of control, choosing instead to focus on the way he appears, so beautiful and proudly on display. He concentrates on the way Patrick breathes his name with the lash of the whip, the way it stiffens Pete’s cock in his breeches — for he must _always_ wear his breeches whilst they do this — the way his stomach twists each time he breaks Patrick into so many delicate, softer pieces.

For a time, at least.

“Don’t presume to test me,” Pete trails his fingers along the length of the welt, just below the plump curve of Patrick’s buttocks. The skin is heated beneath his fingertips, bloomed scarlet and raw to the slightest brush of pressure as Patrick twitches under his hand.

“I...” Patrick huffs a breath and presses his cheek to the hay beneath him, eyes closed and smile languid. “I would remind you which of us is the master.”

“And I would remind you,” Pete pauses to tease the cool silver cap of the crop against the tight pucker between Patrick’s cheeks, the low groan that resonates from him masterfully musical. “Which of us is bound and ready for whipping.”

“To hell with you — ” the objection dies on Patrick’s lips, lost to a silent scream as Pete brings the whip down hard, three times in quick succession rising from the lowest flare of his arse, up and over the cream-pale softness to his lower back. Five beautiful brands now, brilliant blood red, flushed with heat and begging for the touch of Pete’s tongue. “Please…”

Patrick breathes the word as soft as the kiss of a warm breeze to Pete’s cheek. He hums with desire, skin all but vibrating beneath Pete’s hand.

“Tell me what you want,” Pete murmurs, caressing the sun-bright heat of Patrick’s cheeks. Patrick whines, high, desperate and utterly decadent. His cock bounces between his legs — flushed thick and pink with need — as his hips stutter to the thrum of Pete’s voice. “Come now, my love, there’s a good boy…”

“You know perfectly well what I want,” the retort is sharp on Patrick’s tongue, the fire of it not quelled by the smile on his lips. “Is there even the slightest danger of you getting on with it?”

He earns himself another lick of the whip, this time down the length of his outer thigh, the give of the skin, the bloom of the bruise both staggeringly beautiful. His curse is nothing but a low hiss, his hips rocking against the bale in front of him as he seeks the sweet relief of friction. He receives nothing more than the angled crack of the whip, neatly bisecting the five bordeaux welts shining against his skin.

“Enough of that!” Pete sits at the edge of the bale, jaw tight with reprimand and his hand cupping the curve of Patrick’s arse. Patrick arches back into the touch with a groan that shakes through Pete’s palm. “What do you want, Patrick?”

“Would you…” he begins, hesitant and hushed. On his knees, fingers laced and head bowed, he rather resembles an obscene parody of desperate prayer. “Bloody hell, Pete, your cock. That’s what I want — _all_ I want. Do you suppose…?”

 _“Do_ I suppose?” Pete mimics Patrick’s tone as his fingers dip into the cleft of his buttocks, grazing heated skin with maddening precision. There’s a soft grunt falling from plump lips, a cant of his hips back onto Pete’s palm and a murmured plea as he blinks up, cheek pressed to the rough scratch of the bale beneath. There sits an ache somewhere deep in Pete’s chest, some maddening need to gather these moments together as he slips to his knees, the knot of the floorboards rough beneath them as he slides between Patrick’s spread legs. He braces a hand to Patrick’s, fingers tangled together for the briefest moment as he whispers softly. “Up, my love.”

Patrick slides his hands further up his back with Pete’s help, legs spread and fingers flexing, shaking with shuddering desperation as Pete presses close and lightly licks over each bloomed bold blemish that wheals across Patrick’s skin. His tongue is gentle, taunting flirtation against heated flesh soothed soft with tender kisses and gentle bites. Patrick is limp, weak and sag-kneed as he murmurs encouragement and whispers adulation. Pete unbuttons his breeches and frees the aching strain of his cock, angrily weeping and flushed dark to the pale of his palm. He groans as he strokes himself, delights in the crane of Patrick’s jaw over his shoulder, the way he twists himself to watch, the way he whimpers a litany of agonised frustration when he can’t quite see.

Pete revels in it, his cock throbbing heat into his hand as he strokes and tugs at swollen, nerve-bold flesh, crowned sticky with bitter salt. Oh, to smear that across Patrick’s lips, to watch them shine with the slick of it and see the trace of his tongue as he tastes…

He slides his tongue along the crease of Patrick’s cheeks, gathering the taste of heady musk, the sharpness of the sweat that prickles his skin bringing the crashing thunder of fire to his blood. He licks broad strokes, nose nudging the bound clasp of Patrick’s hands on each lap, tongue seeking the heat of tight muscle as Patrick stutters stupefied syllables that flood Pete’s prick with aching need. He cups a hand to each lusciously plump cheek, pillow soft against his palms as he bares him open to quick, clever lashes of his greedily grasping tongue.

And oh, how Patrick sings for him, each moan a melody of sweet invitation, each ragged cry the most wonderful chorus. Pete could be driven mad by the groans, of that he has no doubt, pushed to insanity by the way Patrick presses back to his mouth, the way he whimpers Pete’s name as he slides a finger to carefully breach him.

“You’re a fucking tease,” Patrick moans, nails biting into his palms as Pete laughs, rich and breathy, nipping a bite to the darkest weal. Patrick twitches, teetering on the very edge of the precipice of his steel sharp self-control.

“Now, that’s not particularly gentlemanly,” Pete grins, teeth sinking to the underside of Patrick’s buttock, more intimately personal a portrait than the lashes of leather that streak around it. No one’s teeth will quite match Pete’s, no one else’s bruise would bloom in quite the same way. Possession curls in his gut as Patrick whines and rocks against his finger. “Did you fetch it?”

“Right there,” he inclines his head to the puddle of his shirt. “Damn it all, Peter, hurry…”

Pete finds it with a fumble of questing fingers, the cool glass of a tiny jar of lotion. Fingers slippery-slick with it he slips two into the heat of Patrick’s body, feels each ripple of reacting muscle clenching tight around him. Patrick rises to his knees, rolling his hips as he fucks himself onto the willing press of Pete’s fingers, snarling filth as Pete curls his hand around the heated flush of Patrick’s wet-tipped prick. Tucked in close as he bites bruises to Patrick’s neck — precisely where his neckcloth will rub tomorrow — he holds him close through each desperate rock of his hips.

The air is thick with the smell of sweat, the heady elixir of arousal that stains their skin like sinful intentions. Pete’s cock brushes, hot and heavy, against Patrick’s balls, nudging the pale softness of the skin inside his thighs. He thinks he may be dying with the aching, throbbing desire that burns through his blood, twitching with his pulse to spark him white hot with lascivious lust.

It takes but a moment to shrug off his waistcoat, to tug his shirt back over his shoulders and drop it to join Patrick’s. He should very much like to kick off his boots and breeches, to feel the cool leather of Patrick’s boots against the heated skin of his calves, the press of buckles and buttons to tender flesh. Alas, patience was never his strong suit and with Patrick breathing hushed prayers from pouted lips in his lap it’s all he can do to smooth more lotion to the lust-leaking curve of his cock.

“Yes,” Patrick says, voice low as he bends back over the bale, presenting Pete with his arse, his hole stretched around the invasion of Pete’s fingers. Pete’s stomach cramps with shivering desire, each muscle taut, each sense heightened; he can _taste_ the need as he twists his fingers deeper, as Patrick bites a cry into his lower lip. “Oh God, yes. Now. _Now!”_

Nails carve crescents into pale skin as he sinks into impossibly tight heat, as boldly brilliant as the arching cry of Patrick’s moan. He stills once flush, admiring the way Patrick’s fists clench just above the cleft of his arse and draw the eye deliciously lower, the way the dark shaft of his cock looks trapped between the porcelain press of Patrick’s cheeks. He knows he can’t last, but from the rasp of Patrick’s breathing, the way his hips twitch compulsively under Pete’s hands, he knows Patrick hovers just as close to that tantalising brink of shuddering ecstasy.

He curls an arm around Patrick’s chest, slides his hand through scant-scattered hair, damp with sweat, fingertips teasing the peak of a pebbled nipple as he hauls him upright. Patrick slips against him, driving his cock impossibly deeper, sheathing him entirely as he sucks his mark to the crest of Patrick’s shoulder. So many bruises, so many marks and lashes laid out like a masterpiece against the canvas of misted skin. Pete licks away a salted diamond or two from Patrick’s throat, free hand framing the length of his blood-gorged cock as he hisses a command into his ear.

“Move.”

Patrick does.

Somehow, with his bound hands braced to the firm stretch of Pete’s stomach, he rises up on his knees until nothing but the crown of Pete’s prick remains inside. He pauses at the top of the stroke, tosses a teasing smirk over his shoulder that drifts through Pete as darkly dangerous as smoke before dropping down with a cry.

Pete always forgets, always allows it to slip his mind, how strong those thighs are from hours in the saddle, how thickly fleshed with powerful muscle that drives him up and down the slicked shaft of Pete’s cock. His hand slides, slippery with sweat, to cup the curve of Patrick’s arse, to sink his fingertips into the opulent lushness of it. There’s tension in his gut, the warm flood of impending release building low beneath the etched ink between his hip bones.

“Damn it all, Pete,” Patrick snarls, drawing deliciously tight around his cock, dragging at him with each undulating roll of his skilful hips. “I… I…”

Yes, Pete knows, stroking Patrick in time with each thrust, arching his hips to meet each downstroke as Patrick rocks on trembling thighs. He feels it, the moment Patrick comes undone, the overwhelming press of his release thundering through him to tighten him around Pete’s aching cock, the slick pulse of his come over Pete’s hand, sliding wet between his fingers and over his knuckles as his fists clench tight. Patrick grunts, hips thrust forward as he slumps, head dropped back to Pete’s shoulder and breathing rough and ragged.

Pete presses those come-slicked fingers to the sugared sweetness of Patrick’s lips, feels him suck greedily at them, tongue working over work-rough calluses even as Pete shoves him, face first, back to the bale. Hands damp with spit, sweat and come, he grasps the flare of Patrick’s hips, eyes locked on the slide of his cock in and out like the inevitable pull of the tide. He fucks him deep and hard, the gratifying clench of sensitivity on each stroke underscored with a breathless moaning whimper and his own undignified grunt.

He feels the dam inside bend to the pressure, imagines the heated flood of his release held back by the groaning thrust of it. Patrick strains his arms, flexes his fingers, and gently brushes his fingertips along the slippery length of Pete’s cock as he pounds into him.

The wall gives, snaps and breaks and relief floods him like fire, burning swift and heated over the sweat-slicked crackle of his skin as his back arches, as he plunges in and holds himself there. Each pulse, each quivering tingle blazes along nerve endings to stammer him breathless and slumped, hips rocking weakly as he tucks his nose to the crook of Patrick’s neck and whispers hushed adoration into the delicate shell of his ear.

Patrick croons a soft sound of delight, delicate with the passion of it as Pete curls possessive arms around his waist, crushing him close until, after a time that seems far too short, he begins to struggle away.

“Bugger it all,” he groans, shoulders rolling under Pete’s cheek. “The neckcloth… Would you mind awfully just…”

“Of course…” Pete rushes to comply, freeing the knot with clumsy hands barely coordinated, catching Patrick’s wrists to massage sensation back into no doubt numb fingers. “It didn’t… hurt you?”

“Hurt me?” Patrick cranes his neck, admiring the showpiece of marks left streaked across his skin, fingertips grazing the darkest. “Isn’t that rather the point?”

Pete supposes it is but doesn’t quite know how to voice his thoughts on the matter. He doesn’t object as Patrick sinks down into the hay and tugs Pete down with him, bolstering his head against the warmth of Patrick’s shoulder and losing himself in damp skin and the faint scent of sweat. He aches with the urge to say it, to let the platitude trip from his lips like it doesn’t matter, as though Patrick feels it too. He bites it off with a soft kiss to a smooth jaw, raw with the knowledge that his ardour will never be reciprocated.

“You know I’d never truly hurt you?” Pete brushes a lock of golden hair from Patrick’s eyes. “Only what you ask for?”

“Of course,” Patrick smiles, a wry little twist of his lips.

“Very good,” Pete clears his throat and hopes the lamplight is insufficient to betray the blush that heats his cheeks. “I can’t pretend to understand, as truly I don’t, but if it makes you happy… I seek only to do so, my love.”

“I’m rather fond of you, you know,” Patrick murmurs into Pete’s hair, cut short but with enough length to curl a little. His hand strokes a languid rhythm against the score of Pete’s spine, conducting a piece Pete can’t hear in perfectly precise 4/4 time. Pete remembers him as a child, violin tucked under his chin as he frowned down at the sheet music in confusion. He never did get the hang of reading it, but he got awfully good at playing by ear to avoid their music master’s cane.

“I suppose I’m rather fond of you, too,” Pete smiles as though his heart isn’t breaking. _Fond._ Pete is _fond_ of barley sugar. It seems a poor substitute for love.

Pete — despite what many presume of a serving man — is not stupid. He is painfully, torturously aware of his standing in life and precisely how much lower it is than Patrick’s. Truly, he _understands_ the way of these things, the way their class — or Pete’s lack of it — impacts upon their relationship, possibly more so than their anatomy. Oh, this would be no simpler if Pete were a serving girl, belly filled with an illegitimate child or two to be ignored in the hallways of the big house.

Patrick will never love him but if these — these sweetened moments of tender _themness_ — are the very best that Pete can enjoy, well, then he shall endure the hardship of what falls between.

“I think...” Patrick begins, fingers softly carding through the ravaged tangle of Pete’s unruly curls. “I think I shall sleep in your chamber tonight, if it suits.”

“Of course,” Pete smiles, he knows that he has far finer bed linen and a far more comfortable bedstead than any man in his position has a right to enjoy. He knows this is Patrick’s indulgence, to sleep “rough” in Pete’s small quarters in the coach house. He also knows he wouldn’t do so without fine linen and feather pillows. “It would suit me wonderfully.”

They walk together through the stable block, Pete damping each lamp wick in turn, puddles of light contracting behind them. At the loose box, Patrick pauses, admiration bright on his handsome features as he smiles, fondly indulgent.

“His name?” Pete prompts gently, hand in the warmth of the small of Patrick’s back, still slicked damp with sweat that Pete aches to lick. Patrick cocks his head as he considers, boot kicked up against the lower latch of the stable door, forearms braced to the top of it. A smile spreads with slow intent across the plump plushness of lips painted soft pink in the lamplight.

“Petronius.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so a few tiny things to clarify. The reason no one aside from Pete refers to Patrick as "Patrick" is because Victorians were absolutely obsessed with propriety. Literally everyone, his own mother included, would have called him by the name associated with his title - in this case, Worcester - rather than Patrick or even Stump. In case anyone outside of the UK is wondering, "Worcester" is pronounced "Wusster" and "Beaufort" is "Bo-for" with a long "oh" sound. 
> 
> As for his new horse's name, well, Petronius was the author of the Satyricon (also mentioned in the chapter) thought to be the first real attempt at a modern novel with a narrative structure etc. The Satyricon followed the adventures of a master and servant and their developing sexual relationship. Before the term "homosexual" was coined (a few decades after this story was set) gay men used various terms for themselves to make their sexuality known. One was Petronius. 
> 
> So, tune in next week for more exciting news from 1862! Comments or kudos would be lovely, or if you like, you can stop by my Tumblr [here.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sn1tchesandtalkers)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Duke of Beaufort makes an offer Patrick's can't refuse.
> 
> No, really. He can't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Friday again already. I have lovesick Victorians and a metric butt-ton of smut. Who's with me?
> 
> Yet more artwork by the gorgeous [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) be sure to go and check out the rest of her art [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/) Go and follow her, I promise you won't regret it!
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155712566@N06/41270062955/in/dateposted/)  
> 

Patrick wakes aware of two things, both of which irritate him immensely.

The first is that the tapping he can hear is clearly not an errant woodpecker to be dealt with using his father’s shotgun (he’s not serious, _not quite_ anyway) but rather someone knocking at the door. The second is that the daylight breaching the curtains suggests whomsoever is doing the knocking intends for him to greet the day.

Damn and blast it all, he is _not_ fond of mornings.

“Come in,” he mutters, voice rough from sleep and sharp with annoyance. Nothing happens. “I said _come in_ , for heaven’s sake!”

The door opens — somewhat cautiously — the neatly coiffed and splendidly turned out vision of his valet appearing inch by reluctant inch. Patrick tuts as he hauls himself half-upright; if Hurley didn’t want to see Pete pressed face first into Patrick’s backside the last time, Patrick maintains that he should have knocked. Irritation shifts quickly to discomfort as the sheets scrape the tender flesh of his arse, a low hiss slipping between his teeth as Pete — gloriously naked beneath the counterpane — does little more than burrow further into his pillow with a sigh.

“My Lord, I wasn’t sure where to find you — ”

“Nonsense,” Patrick objects with a pained frown — he’ll need some cold cream on the welts spanning his buttocks, maybe Pete will oblige later. “You knew perfectly well where you’d find me, let’s not waste one another’s time on silly coyness. Now, have you brought tea? Or better yet, something a little stronger…?”

“Breakfast is ready at the house, my Lord,” Hurley informs him with that special kind of blandness that drips with judgement. His hands are folded loosely behind his back, eyes trained professionally on a spot somewhere close to the ceiling. Patrick wants to childishly throw back the covers and reveal his half-hard cock but refrains. “Lord Beaufort has asked that you make your way to the great hall once you’ve partaken, he very much desires your company.”

“Ah, but the house is not _here_ , Hurley,” Patrick harrumphs and throws himself back into the pillows, Pete’s hand curling over his hip, his fingers, splayed inches from where Patrick aches for him to touch, the most delicious distraction. Patrick glances down, Pete’s eyes are closed but his lips are quirked into a tease of a smile as he begins to stroke gently. Patrick doesn’t want to smile in response, he’s _sore_ damn it, aching through his shoulders and hips quite aside from the sting left by the crop. “What kind of valet fetches his master from his chamber without tea?”

“This is not _your_ chamber, my Lord,” Hurley murmurs with just the right amount of deference to infer insolence. “Tea was fetched there but _your_ bed was empty. It’s beyond my remit to fetch tea for the stableman.”

“Stable _master,”_ Pete guffaws through a mouthful of feather pillow. “Is that any way to speak to the consort of the Marquess?”

“Peter,” Patrick cautions, though his smile is wide as he shuffles closer to the smooth warmth of Pete’s bare skin. Pete draws him in, nudges a kiss to his shoulder, another to his throat, lips lingering at the corner of his mouth as Hurley clears his throat dramatically from the door. “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he ignores Pete’s muttered _not yet, you’re not_ , “Hurley, wait outside. I presume fetching me suitable attire was within your remit?”

“My Lord, your day’s attire is laid out in your dressing room which — you might recall — is in the house,” he pauses to arch an eyebrow at the bureau in favour of meeting Patrick’s eyes. “Which is not here. I understand it must be difficult to remember when you spend so little time there.”

“Very good, very good,” Patrick laughs, shooing Andy away with wave of his hand. “Now, kindly give me a moment to ready myself. Assuming you don’t wish to see the magnificence of my manhood.”

“I’d really rather not, if it’s all the same to you, sir,” Hurley objects with a grimace. Impertinent buggers, the lot of them, Patrick truly cannot find the staff. He leaves them with a dramatic sigh and a click of the door, the silence descending once more.

They move to their sides, fingers laced together as tender kisses brush to warm mouths.

“I didn’t hear you leave this morning,” Patrick murmurs into the warmth of Pete’s throat. He knows Pete rises early, even on mornings such as this when they share a bed, slipping away to the stables with the day’s instructions for the men. He knows he returns, silent in the dawn gloom, and slides back under the counterpane to enjoy an hour or so of quiet company.

“Good,” Pete whispers, sucking a delicate rose-bloom bruise to Patrick’s neck — low, his collar will hide it with ease — fingers eagerly seeking out the curve of his cock. “Do you suppose…”

“Not a hope, Lewis, I’m too damned sore,” Patrick grumbles without malice, sinking into another kiss, fingers caught in Pete’s neatly trimmed curls. He’s reluctant to break the touch of their lips, aching with the need to fall into the bed and remain there for the rest of the day. “I suppose I ought to go and see what the old bugger wants.”

“So many things that you ought to do,” Pete observes as Patrick rolls from the bed with a groan. Bugger it all his backside feels as though it’s on fire, Pete smirks and hauls himself upright, sheets pooling around his waist. Patrick bites his lip, Christ but Pete is beautiful.

He smiles in response and reaches for his undergarments, distracted by the clink of porcelain, eyes meeting Pete’s as he holds out the pot of cold cream with eyebrows raised in invitation, “Let me see to those bruises.”

Half an hour later, Hurley can barely look him in the eye as they walk across the estate together.

“Something wrong, my good man?” Patrick asks brightly, aware he should be scandalised to have the staff see him leaving the coach house at this hour, and in yesterday’s riding attire no less. He cares not a whit for idle gossip.

“Lord Worcester,” Hurley begins, voice strained as he pauses, apparently trying to gather the appropriate response. “You do not pay me nearly enough to hear the things I’ve just heard.”

Patrick is still chuckling as he makes his way through the hallways to greet his father.

“Worcester,” his father addresses him from across the expanse of exquisite marble floor of the great hall, the smart _tap tap tap_ of his heels resonating to seemingly vibrate through Patrick’s teeth. Damn and blast it all, why must the wily old devil demand an audience before the sun has quite cleared the yardarm?

“Ah, the Grand Old Duke himself,” Patrick proclaims, raising the whiskey tumbler he’s all too aware it’s far too early for in a parody of a toast. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your summons, father?”

“Your impertinence remains intact then,” his father complains, as fit and finely trim in his jacket as a man half his age. “Didn’t they beat that damned insolent streak out of you at Eton?”

“No, father, they did not,” Patrick downs the whiskey with a shudder, the crystal of the glass banging sharply against the marble mantel. “And it appears that buggery is a poor substitute for discipline.”

“You’re a disgrace,” his father informs him, free from malice and soft with the indulgence befitting of an only son – an only _child_. “Barely fit to carry the Stumph name.”

“You say that as though it were important,” Patrick raises his eyebrows, his eyes – and mind – already on the fields stretching away from the house, the heat of a barely tamed beast between his thighs. First the stallion, then the groom. His fingers twitch with anticipation at the very thought. “Stumph is not _Percy_ nor _Montagu_ , no matter how tediously fashionable the Saxony connection may be since dear Albert became consort, do not presume to flatter us.”

“We sit in line for the throne… strictly speaking, at least – ” His Lordship blusters with a huff. Patrick laughs.

_“Strictly speaking_ father, yes, we do,” he agrees with a sarcastic nod. “But we would require some rather magnificently _dramatic_ incidents to occur at rather a lot of those spectacularly tedious balls you drag me to in order for that to become a reality.”

“Must every conversation with you be riddled with these childish interjections, Worcester?” his father sighs with a shake of his head.

“Must you summon me at an hour I could be riding or in bed?” he counters, eyes roving towards the decanter on the sideboard, left – at his behest – by a long-suffering maid. He pauses a perfect beat, lips quirking into a smirk as he reaches to pour himself another measure. “Or both. One does rather beautifully complement the other, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Patrick,” his father begins, sharp with rebuke. Patrick clutches his chest in a dramatic caricature of horror.

“Good grief, father, did you use my _name?”_ Patrick lounges against the fireplace as though remaining upright under his own steam is simply too much of an effort and takes a moment to allow his eye to wander over the Wootton over the fireplace. _A Grey Horse and_ _Jockey in Red Colours, before a Stable_. Let no one accuse the man of taking to flights of fancy when he named his paintings. “Whatever next?”

“Worcester,” his father snaps sharply, hand raking through that thin, iron grey hair that Patrick supposes he shall be cursed with one day. “Might I remind you that you are close to thirty and too old for these childlike games. Would it be possible – do you suppose – for us to have a conversation like adult men rather than you forcing me into this ridiculous charade?”

“I’m not sure I’ve enough whiskey in me,” Patrick smiles his sweetest, least sincere smile. “But I suppose I shall try my best.”

Silence lapses for a moment as his father – with the kind of sigh Patrick has only heard uttered by his former Latin master – reaches for a glass and the decanter himself. Patrick supposes it’s a sign of his juvenile temperament that it gives him a ridiculous thrill of victory to know he’s driven his father to drink in less than five minutes. That thrill lasts for precisely the length of time it takes the Duke of Beaufort to down his whiskey and lick away the amber droplets caught in the rather magnificent thatch of his moustache. Blue eyes – sharp, knowing and entirely too like Patrick’s own – regard him keenly and in a manner that makes Patrick wholly uncomfortable.

There is little chance that this conversation will end in a way Patrick will find tolerable.

“I’ve made a match for you,” the Duke informs him crisply, as though he supposes if he says it with enough authority, Patrick will not object. He supposes wrongly.

“I don’t require your _assistance_ with such matters, as I’ve told you before – ”

“As I’ve told _you_ before,” his father looks away, a development Patrick likes not at all. “This is not your decision. You _will_ be married and since none the perfectly splendid matches offered to you so far have been to your… rather exacting standards, I’ve taken the matter into my own hands.”

“The matches I was offered were perfectly _ghastly_!” Patrick would like to counter with something witty and cutting but his father looks deadly serious and that’s never a good sign.

“What was wrong with the Urie girl?” his father’s moustache bristles with offence. Patrick wishes once again that he could grow one, it would be convenient to have facial hair that announced his mood. “I thought she was perfectly charming, I — ”

“ _Brendainne_?” Patrick curses his voice for sliding up an octave. “You were _serious_ about that? I presumed it was a poor attempt at humour on your part. Father, had I married her I’d have found myself in the asylum or hurling myself from the roof before I reached thirty.”

His father narrows his eyes and flattens his mouth in a manner that suggests he wouldn’t be entirely opposed to either of those options. Patrick knows it’s bluster; he’s the only son and heir and, with the man gone sixty, he has little chance of producing another. He considers another measure but decides against it; he’d rather like to able to keep his seat on the new horse at some point today. Instead, he sighs with every ounce of childish petulance he can muster, trailing his fingertips along the lapel of his jacket as he speaks.

“Lord Beaufort,” he begins. His father sighs. Patrick presses on regardless. “I’m barely twenty-eight, there are _years_ ahead for me to marry, don’t you think — ”

“No,” his father interrupts, sharp with irritation. “Worcester, I can’t allow this to continue any longer, you are a Stumph, the _only_ Stumph set to inherit the Dukedom and you _will_ marry and provide an heir. Good grief, I was never this particular — ”

“Oh, I’m sure mother would be _delighted_ to hear that.” Patricks rolls his eyes with a sigh and stares down into the grate. In the height of summer, no fire is lit, just the barren blackness of a scrubbed clean hearth. “Father… You _do_ know I’ll never love a wife, no matter who you match me with, don’t you?”

It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation, not the first time Patrick has said the words without saying them at all. His father knows, perfectly aware of Patrick’s persuasion towards the less fair of the sexes but, in that British way, he can’t say the words aloud either.

“I don’t ask that you love her,” his father begins after a kindly silence, his voice softening as he pours them both another measure, the cut crystal standing untouched on the mantel. “I ask only that you do your duty and — and that you’re kind to her. You can do that, surely.”

“You imagine that I’d be unkind?” Patrick asks softly, grasping his tumbler and swirling the amber slick of it, reminded with a pang of the depths of Pete’s eyes. “You truly think so little of me?”

“My boy,” the Duke murmurs quietly into the bristle of his moustache. “I don’t doubt for a second that any lady would be quite lucky to have you as her husband.”

There seems to be too little air in the room, Patrick’s brilliantly starched collar and expertly knotted neckcloth doing nothing but pressing with suffocating stillness into his windpipe. He imagines for a moment that he might lapse into one of those terrifying coughing fits that shake his bones to glass and leave him drowning in air. _Nerves_ , the doctor proclaimed when he was a child. Patrick has since enquired many dozen times or more why _nerves_ should attempt to murder him in cold blood every time he was whipped into activity by the games master but no one has provided a satisfactory answer.

He breathes as deeply as he can, shaking fingers gripped into the crystal as he throws back the measure and gathers the raging tempest of his thoughts. He loves Pete, adores the man with a sharpness that makes his chest ache, completion is beyond contemplation unless Pete is with him. There is no sunrise unless it has set with Pete, no pull of the tide nor change in the seasons. A future without Pete, Patrick supposes, is a future of endless, monotonous grey that stretches away in every direction that Patrick can imagine.  He shakes his head.

“I thank you for your kind offer,” he begins with the sharp bite of objection on the tip of his tongue, tripping from his lips. “But I’m afraid I shall have to decline, father.”

“Must you be so bloody _stubborn,_ Worcester?” his father grits his teeth as anger blazes bright in sea-blue eyes. Something shifts in his expression, some imperceptible change that darkens indulgence to fury. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we leave for her debut in a fortnight, your engagement is to be announced at the ball.”

“Well then,” Patrick places his glass down crisply. “I’m terribly sorry to disappoint _her_ , but you shall be going alone, father. I shan’t be married against my will.”

With that he turns to walk away, jaw set in defiance and hands balled sharp into fists, the crescent curve of his nails biting into the soft flesh of his palms. He is barely three strides away when his father’s voice cracks against him like a lash.

“I _will_ disinherit you,” he snaps, vicious enough to bring Patrick up short. “If you refuse this match, Patrick, you lose everything. The name, the Dukedom, the house.”

“You — you have no other heirs,” Patrick points out as he turns with a smirk that he knows lacks his usual confidence. His father has never been one for idle threats, never one for more than indulgent smiles and exasperated sighs.

“I have nephews,” his father points out. “I have cousins and distant relatives. You have _duties_ to this house, Worcester, and this is the final time I shall debate this with you. You _will_ marry and you _will_ provide the Stumph name with an heir or, so help me, you’ll be cut off from the family. I shall house you, of course, clothe and feed you, I’m not barbaric. But your lifestyle will not be maintained and, when I die, well… your fate will lie in the hands of the next Duke of Beaufort. I can’t assure you that he’ll prove to be quite as generous as I am.”

“You’re bluffing,” Patrick scoffs but the arrogance is draining from him like the ruby spread of spilled port. “You wouldn’t… Imagine the scandal.”

“Imagine the scandal when people — decent people — outside of this household discover my only son and heir is fucking the damn stable lad!”

“Stable _master,”_ Patrick interjects, sour with sullen irritation, raging at the way his father manages to make it sound like some kind of sordid tryst and nothing more.

“Do not presume to test my patience further,” his father warns, heels drawn together, hands tucked behind his back. Patrick fears that he may have actually pushed the old man too far this time. “We leave on the fifth. You will present yourself for the journey, you will be dressed appropriately, you will be thoroughly charming. Do you understand?”

Patrick understands perfectly, that unsettling sense of never being quite the son his father had in mind, of being slightly lacking but indulged nonetheless. The rug of equilibrium is being pulled from beneath him sharply and he weighs his options in the same quick, sharp-witted way he considers a fence whilst riding. Press on and risk a fall, take his chances on something that stands little chance of being anything other than dreadful, or change course, find another way to reach the same goal. Patrick has been described as many things, many of them less than complimentary, but foolish is not one of them. He bites his lip, sinks his teeth into the swell of it, still sore from being bitten the night before, and heaves a breath through his nose.

His father watches him, sharp eyes and shoulders square, regal and commanding in his finely tailored jacket. Patrick darts a glance at the door, a cornered animal with the trap slamming shut. Oh, he knows his father means well, but propriety must be maintained and proper appearances upheld.

Patrick has very little choice but to square his own shoulders, draw himself up to his full height that never feels quite so impressive when he isn’t mounted on his horse, and nod stiffly.

“As you wish, father,” it’s his own heels that _tap tap tap_ against the marble as he takes his leave, reaching for the door handle before the footman — Fredericks, maybe? Fredrickson? Something like that — can do so for him. “I warn you, I shan’t hear another word of this in the meantime, don’t presume to trouble me with it.”

“Worcester,” his father calls after him, voice softly coated with the tender cadence of parental regret. Patrick pauses, head cocked, but refuses to look back. “I’m not doing this to… upset you, you know?”

Patrick blinks and is momentarily horrified to find his eyes glassy and salt-sharp. _You’re not a coward, are you?_ Apparently he is, terrified of the possibility of something as harmless as a woman. He gathers himself in a moment, sniffing back any more traitorous tears before they can fall, his voice clipped sharp as he replies.

“Your Grace.”

And with that, he allows the footman to close the door behind him.

~*~

“A picnic!” Patrick teases gently as he unsaddles Petronius, hefting it down with a deep breath drawn scented with the smell of warm leather and horse sweat. “I don’t believe I’ve been on a picnic since we were boys! Tell me, Peter, did you spend awfully long preparing the sandwiches? Squares or triangles, dearheart?”

Behind him, propping his mare’s saddle against the trunk of the tree where they have secured the horses, Pete scowls and flushes a delicate rose across his cheekbones. Patrick’s grin widens; he does so love to make Pete blush.

“Must you be such a terrible bore about everything?” Pete snaps, saddlebag caught in the casual grasp of his fist. “It’s nothing more than a little bread and cheese since you made such a damn fuss about leaving before lunch was served.”

“Ah, but did you fetch a blanket?” Patrick continues to poke fun at Pete as he grabs the second saddlebag — clanking in a way that suggests perhaps the old boy brought something for them to drink — and makes his way down to the lakeshore. “A terribly pretty one?”

“Why do you insist on doing this each and every time?” Pete asks quietly, three paces behind. Patrick pauses with a frown, confusion creasing his features as he cocks his head, half an unsure step taken back towards Pete who continues, stiff with forced formality. “I apologise, sir. I only thought… I thought perhaps you might enjoy it. Maybe even think it romantic.”

It’s on the very tip of Patrick’s tongue to continue his playful teasing, to ask Pete if perhaps he’s found that stash of dreadful romance novels his mother keeps in the library but something gives him pause. There’s hurt in Pete’s amber eyes, discomfort in the way they’re directed down towards his boots as he rolls his thumb against the bag in his hands. Patrick wishes — not for the first time — that he _understood_ these moments that seem to plague their time together, the times that Pete appears to need something that Patrick can’t for the life of him begin to fathom. He would give it in a heartbeat, whatever it is that Pete craves so dearly, if only he _understood._

He tugs at the strap of his own bag, fumbling with the nervous energy that’s plagued him for as long as he can remember, the inability to truly concentrate on the thing that sits before him. It’s _infuriating_ to struggle in this way, to try and piece together the nuances of a conversation that seems to slide through his fingers like so much sand in an hourglass. He sighs and takes a step towards Pete, cupping the warmth of his jaw as he maps the soft shadow of a dark sideburn with his thumb. Their lips touch, just a brush of warm mouths as they lean into one another for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick offers, because it seems the right thing to say. He _is_ sorry that Pete is unhappy, even if he can’t for the life of him work out the cause. “It was never my intention to make you feel foolish.”

Pete relaxes, the give of his shoulders soft with a breath hissed hot and stale between his lips. Patrick tilts his head, his smile the picture of apology as he waits for Pete to speak.

“Shall we?” Pete offers the crook of his arm with a charming smile. Of course, the only proper response is a sharp slap delivered to the firm flesh of his backside as Patrick takes off with a laugh for the shore of the lake. “You’re nothing but an overgrown boy, Worcester!”

“Better to behave like a boy than keep a stick lodged up my arse,” Patrick is already struggling out of his jacket and waistcoat, the promise of relief from the June sun reflected in the mirror-like perfection of the lake’s surface. It would have been far more pleasurable to ride out in the early morning but Sunday means church and his mother does so like him to adorn the family pew at St Michaels.

Pete undresses with far more care, breeches, shirt and waistcoat neatly folded and placed atop the blanket – Patrick _knew_ he would fetch one – like a man who has never had someone else do such things for him. Patrick’s are tossed every which way, crumpled in a heap amongst the grass that he’ll worry about later as he shoves down his undergarments and, with a whoop of a battle cry, he charges into the lake.

His scream of shock at the cold is, he’s sure, quite undignified if Pete’s peal of raucous laughter is anything to go by. He scowls, skin prickled gooseflesh as he gasps through the chill of it and presses a hand between his legs with a grimace of disdain. If he thought for a moment that they could exchange heated touches beneath the surface, that they could lose the bitter pearl of their release in the water then his cock has different ideas as it attempts to retreat back into his body from whence it came.

Pete is still smiling, head cocked as he drops his own drawers to the ground, the gold of his skin glowing in the dew-dappled sunlight that streams through the trees behind him. Pete stretches, languid and graceful, the line of his ribs displayed under the taut pull of muscle and sinew. Patrick’s stomach lurches with adoration, eyes wide as Pete turns back to straighten his clothes, the delicious curve of his arse on display as he bends double. Patrick’s tongue traces the curve of his lower lip, teeth sinking into it as an afterthought until Pete straightens, turns and with a great display of hesitancy tests the water with his foot.

“Blast it all, it’s like ice!” he declares, yanking his toes back with a shiver.

“Come along,” Patrick clenches his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering traitorously. “The first step is always the worst, what are you? A coward?”

“Perhaps I’ll just — ”

Patrick gives Pete no chance to finish, hurling himself from the water in an instant and barrelling into him all arms and legs to greet the solid heat of him.

“Warm me, Lewis!” he demands as they plunge into the water, Pete’s own squeal just as undignified as Patrick’s before it. “You mustn’t allow the heir to the dukedom to succumb to pneumonia! Imagine the bother arranging my funeral should cause!”

Patrick secures himself to Pete’s back like a limpet, arms around his neck and legs secured around his waist. Pete twists and curses and coughs up water but Patrick holds as tight as he would to a flighty horse, thighs secure and heels to Pete’s hips. Finally tired of the game, Pete rolls forward, plunging them both beneath the frigid surface of it, surrounding them in the chill as Patrick loosens his grip and Pete breaks free and kicks away from him.

Patrick surfaces immediately, nose filled with lake water and eyes blinking furiously as he coughs and splutters. Around him, the lake stills, the water calming from the roiling waves they had created together to return to almost mirror-like perfection, his own frown greeting him in the glitter-glass surface.

“Bugger it all, Lewis,” he calls, swiping his hands through his hair and sweeping it back from his face. He’s not unduly worried, Pete has a truly marvellous ability to hold his breath, something Patrick has benefitted from on many an occasion. “Where the devil _are_ you?”

Nothing stirs, the water marred only by the ripples he creates as he turns to examine the surface. They’ve kicked up the bed of the lake, the water murkier than it once was as he peers down, determined to discover Pete’s hiding place before he shows himself.

He shouts, shock-sharp and bold, as a head is thrust between his thighs, as Pete staggers upright with Patrick balanced on his shoulders. The summer air is glorious against his chilled-damp skin but only for a moment before Pete unbalances with the weight and they both crash to the water once more. They surface together, weak with laughter and breathless as they sink into a kiss dropped with the dew of the lake that clings cool and slicked to their lips.

“It’s bloody freezing,” Patrick observes as they draw apart. “Perhaps we should…?”

“Get out so soon?” Pete teases even as he drags Patrick onto the shore to stretch against the blanket in the shade, conscious of the tendency of his pale skin to flame red and sore in the sun. “What _are_ you? A coward?”

Water gathers with prism-like perfection amongst the curl of Pete’s hair, drawing the drag of Patrick’s fingers through it as they lie side by side on the wool and let the warm air dry them. He turns his attention to the dark etching on Pete’s stomach, the curious pull he feels to it impossible to define as he shuffles down to touch, to stare and taste with teasing kisses to ink-stained skin. Pete’s cock stirs, his fingers sliding into Patrick’s hair to hold him close and chase sparks of tingling need down his spine as he groans softly against Pete’s stomach.

“Wait,” Pete breathes as Patrick — ever impatient — moves to slide lower, to take the curve of Pete’s cock into his mouth and feel it harden against the soft flesh of his tongue. He glances up, curiosity no doubt painting his features as Pete smiles and reaches languidly for his discarded neckcloth. “Do you trust me?”

Does he trust Pete? Pete would do as well ask him if he trusts that the sun rises in the east, if he believes the moon orbits the earth, such is the unshakeable depth of his confidence. He nods slowly, lies back with a smile and murmurs softly, “Without hesitation, my sweet.”

“Excellent,” Pete whispers, gently securing the neckcloth over Patrick’s eyes, tightening it at the base of his skull and pulling the ends to trail back over his collarbone. “You really are quite beautiful, you know.”

“As are you, but you’ve rather spoiled the view,” Patrick’s smile is washed to a gasp as Pete takes the half-hard jut of his cock into the roughened warmth of his palm, strokes delivered casually as the warmth of his lips radiates just out of reach of Patrick’s own. “What on earth do you have planned, dear boy?”

There’s no reply but the slackening of the hold about his prick, nothing but the noise of leather loosening somewhere to his right as he inclines his head in consideration. He isn’t bound, he could loosen the makeshift blindfold immediately if he chooses. He’s rather too curious, his cock a little too insistent in its pulsing throb between his legs, to take such drastic measures as he settles back against the blanket and waits. Pete kneels at his side after a moment or two, fingertips a languid tease against Patrick’s stomach as he cups his jaw in one hand, thumb and fingers pressing to the softness of his cheeks.

“Oh, Peter,” Patrick says with a low, breathy laugh. “This isn’t what a gentleman uses his neckcloth for.”

“Have you forgotten so quickly?” Pete asks, fingers tightening against Patrick’s skin. “I’m still not a gentleman, my love.”

He moves away once more, the rustle of paper marking his movements. Patrick takes a moment to appreciate all of that which draws into focus in the isolation of darkness. Each sensation is heightened, each caress of the warm breeze against the aching stiffness of his cock the sweetest torment, the smell of Pete’s skin sharp in his nose. Pete slides back alongside him, the hard press of his prick unmistakable in Patrick’s side as he brushes his lips to Patrick’s ear.

“I’ve heard it said,” he begins, something cool and rounded trailing against Patrick’s lower lip. “That the first taste of any delicacy is taken with the eyes. I have a private theory that sight can… somewhat spoil the experience. Here… taste.”

With that he nudges whatever it is past Patrick’s lips to greet the nip of his teeth with questing fingertips. Something sharp but edged with sweetness explodes against Patrick’s tongue; a blackcurrant, stolen from the kitchen garden no doubt, vibrant bitterness edged with a sugared kiss. Patrick licks his lips to chase each lingering taste, sucks Pete’s fingers into his mouth and swirls his tongue with sinful suggestion against the tips.

“Good,” he proclaims, eyes closed needlessly behind dark linen. “But not quite sweet enough to sate my craving, my dear.”

Pete’s laugh is the curl of a hand about Patrick’s cock, the slow slide of lips along his spine, his thighs falling apart without conscious thought. His hips twitch, a sharp hiss caught between his lips as something grazes, sun-warmed and smooth, against the tight peak of his nipple, the bright burn of sensation streaking across his skin. He can sense the proximity of Pete’s fingers to his lips, feel the heat they radiate as he pauses. Patrick’s tongue slides slowly against his lower lip, flooding in anticipation of touch and taste.

Something soft brushes his mouth beneath Pete’s fingers, he bites into it and feels the juice flood his tongue, sticky and sweetly perfumed with a bite of tartness to the taste. A gooseberry; plump and bursting ripely decadent to coat his mouth. Pete presses his fingers in deeper with demand, rocking them back and forth against the pursed plush soft of Patrick’s pouted lips as he sucks away each lingering taste of fruit and the salt tang of his skin.

“Bloody hell,” Pete groans. Patrick smiles, chasing an errant bead of juice over the curve of his lip as Pete withdraws his fingers.

“Still not sweet enough,” he whispers, shuddering stuttered breaths in anticipation of the next taste.

Pete moves — to his knees Patrick would guess from the way the sound of his suddenly laboured breathing shifts and heightens — the warm wash of his scent enough to drown Patrick as he swings a leg across to straddle his chest. He sits back, the well-muscled round of his arse to Patrick’s chest, knees pressed to Patrick’s underarms and fingers gently carding through Patrick’s hair. He should complain about the stickiness of the fruit raking through it but finds he cares too little to object. His cock aches, burning with an echo of each throb of his messy, pulsing heart. He could touch himself, he knows his hands aren’t tied although they’ve somehow drifted above his head in supplication, yet he wishes to see this through to Pete’s desired conclusion.

The smell of the strawberry floods his senses before it touches his lips, plump and sweetly inviting. He bites down slowly, tastes the rich flood of it sumptuous and decadent against his tongue. He lets the juice flow over his mouth, lets it coil in lazy streams to streak his chin with sticky crimson as Pete moans above him.

A second fruit is quickly presented, as deliciously ripe and lush with juice as the first. He takes his time with this one, curling his tongue around it slowly, catching the tips of Pete’s calloused fingers with the flicker of it, sucking showily at it until the delicate skin breaks with the pressure. His skin is washed with the juice, bathed in sticky, sugar-bright sweetness as Pete groans with desperate greed.

“Have I found what it is you want?” Pete’s voice is hoarse, raw and wanting. Patrick can smell the musk of him, the way it mixes with the strawberry juice that leaves his skin tacky. He shakes his head slowly. “My dear, I’m running out of things for you to taste.”

“Keep trying,” Patrick urges, nails biting blood-sharp points of pressure into his palms. “I’ll know the taste immediately, I’m sure of it…”

There’s a fumble by his head, another scratching scape of waxed paper and then the soft press of something cool and smooth to his lips. He flickers his tongue against it, teases against the fruit gently as Pete moans, ragged and broken. A cherry this time, plump and sweet. He bites softly, lets the juice trickle over his lips to stain his chin, chased by the eager touch of Pete’s fingers, scooping it back to his mouth, pressing inside where Patrick sucks in time with the pulse of his prick.

“More?” Pete offers, voice the barest rasp against his throat as Patrick smiles into the darkness.

“Give me something sweeter,” he whispers, lips pouted in invitation. “Come now, Pete, what else would you have me taste?”

Pete shifts against him, one large hand cupping the back of Patrick’s head and drawing him up, meeting the expectant press of his lips with the leaking crown of his blood-gorged cock. Patrick hums appreciation like a melody, tongue slicking soft against the tip, the taste of Pete’s prick sharp on his lips. He leans back, as though to meet Pete’s eyes were he not still blindfolded, the smirk playing sweet about his lips as he murmurs softly, “Oh yes. Perfect.”

Both of Pete’s hands tangle in his hair, fingers caught amongst the still-damp curling mess of it and the length of the neckcloth bound about it. He’s rewarded with no more than the tip, streaking slick and slippery against his lips as he sucks greedily at what little he’s granted. He slides his hands to cup the glorious curve of Pete’s arse, playing his palms against the smooth, heated silk of his skin. There’s the faintest note of sweat under the familiar scent of Pete’s body; leather and cotton and carbolic soap, the taste of cock and come sharp on his tongue.

“More,” he murmurs around the press of open mouthed kisses to the flush-flare head of Pete’s prick. “Please...”

Pete can’t resist him begging, has never been able to stand strong in the face of a well-placed plea dropped sweet with a honeyed smile and, as the swollen length of his cock slides between the juice-slicked plush of Patrick’s lips, he knows that exceptions are not about to be made today. Pete moans his name, sweetly soft and sharp with desire, his cock sliding to the back of Patrick’s throat. Patrick allows Pete to do the work, to cup his head in both hands and roll his hips to the rhythm that draws him sweetly closer to release. He’s close to completion already, that much Patrick can tell in the sharp way his hips arch under Patrick’s hands, in the way his breathing stutters as the taste of bitter salt slicks the tender, hidden parts of Patrick’s mouth.

He slides a hand blindly up Pete’s side, feels the ridged tautness of work-wire muscle, up and over his throat, along the line of his jaw to slip two fingers into the willing, wet heat of Pete’s mouth. Pete sucks with greedy intent, just as Patrick works the heated press of his prick between his lips. Patrick is surrounded by Pete, consumed by the smell-feel-taste of him, warmly familiar comfort a counterpoint to the raging fire of lust as brightly brilliant as the first time above the coach house. He slides his fingers free, down the curve of Pete’s backside to slip between his cheeks, to press inside the tight clench of glorious heat and find that spot — that sparkling point of thrumming pleasure — fingers crooked just so as Pete spasms ecstasy in corded thighs and washed-weak, raw-torn cries.

When Pete comes — when his world crashes down and reduces to nothing but his sharp shout of Patrick’s name — he feels it. He feels the almost-imperceptible way Pete’s stomach tenses taut with blazing need, how he clenches with grasping greed around the push of Patrick’s fingers. Pete jerks with jolting breath, hitching tight under Patrick’s hands as the first spurt of salt-slicked ecstasy paints the back of his throat. He swallows hungrily as Pete fucks into his mouth, choking on the flood of it. The hands in his hair tighten further, the rut of desperate hips sending the spill of his release to leak over Patrick’s lips and swirl with the faint cling of fruit that slicks there.

Whimpered moans fall sweet from Pete above him as Patrick strokes his thighs, gentle tenderness scored into warm skin and trailed with circled thumbs to honey-sweet hips. Pete plumbs his mouth with his cock, the graze and push of it slicking come to trickle from the corners of Patrick’s lips, his wrist caught before he can swipe it away with the back of his hand.

“Don’t,” Pete whispers, thumb blazing heat into Patrick’s skin as he traces his cheekbone. “My God, but you’re beautiful like this. I wish I could show you how wonderful you look right now...”

Pete slides down his body, bare skin rough to the sweat-mist of Patrick’s, lips capturing his own in a kiss that sends his head awhirl. Pete licks over the flood of berries and bitter pearl that coat his mouth and chin then lower, scoring delicious heat in kisses bitten sharp to the column of Patrick’s throat. Further yet, mouth nipping fire into the sensitive pebble of Patrick’s nipples, tongue and teeth and blissful friction as he licks, sucks, bites his way down until he’s hovering, arm crooked under Patrick’s thigh and holding his legs apart.

“You look,” he pauses to brush a spark-bright kiss to the wound-tender tip of Patrick’s twitching cock, “thoroughly delicious.”

Patrick is lost, lips caught in a silent scream as Pete takes him down all at once. His hands have once more curled above his head, tangling into the blanket beneath them as he arches up and cants his hips just so, all the better to bring the glorious heat of Pete’s tongue to the sensitive flare just beneath the head of his cock. Pete groans his approval, head bobbing sweet as his blunt-tipped nails dig into the meat of Patrick’s thigh.

He’s impossibly sensitive and supposes — on an academic level at least — that the removal of his vision must have something to do with it, the decadent assault on his senses that Pete has just paced him through enough to have him staggering on the brink of insanity already. He can hear the wet smack of lips against his prick, still taste the bright bloom of Pete against his lips and, as Pete begins to circle his hole with an inquisitive fingertip, he feels the rush of liquid heat pooling in his groin.

Pete presses his finger in, just the tip, barely breaching him but it’s enough. He slams into the wall of his release, body rigid beneath the eager work of Pete’s mouth, his finger, the hand gripped into his skin. Each sweetened swirl of pleasure seems to layer above the last, crescendoing like a song, like waves, like the raging crash of thunder that slams his head from within. He feels each pulsing throb of it, each tremored grasp of Pete’s lips as he urges him through the shaking fog. He collapses back, spent, sated and slicked with sweat, as Pete pulls off and presses a tender kiss to his cock that sends him twitching away with shuddering sensitivity.

Pete curls to him, propped on an elbow as he strokes a lazy symphony of tingling sensation into Patrick’s skin. When the tremors leave him, when he can draw breath and sensible thought once more, he feels the tug of nimble fingers at the knot of the neckcloth, the world flooding back to glorious brightness once more. He blinks, disoriented for a moment, then clutches into Pete with ravening hands and tasting lips, sharing the tang of their shared release with a groan.

“My God, Pete,” he whispers, sun dancing blazing points of colour to speckle his vision. “You’re truly incredible.”

They fall apart after a moment or two, fingers caught and trapped together tightly, Patrick’s eyes closed against the assault of the midday brightness. Pete begins to talk, low and soft and something to do with Petronius’ training regimen in readiness for the first meet of the season in November. Patrick allows it to drift over him — he’s never been particularly fond of hunting, preferring instead to show his face for long enough to declare his horse sufficiently seasoned, then slinking to the public house. In truth, he spends much of the hour or so he can tolerate roaring drunk on sherry and, more often than not, finds himself arse first amongst the hounds.

But he does rather love the cadence of Pete’s voice, the gentle way it rolls over him as he — rolled to his stomach now — strokes Patrick’s hair with gentle tenderness. He hears half-caught words of fences and flatwork, of adjusting his feed and having the veterinary take a look over him. He nods in appropriate places but mostly simply floats on summer warmth and birdsong above him, Pete’s hand warm in his grasp.

“When did you intend to tell me?”

The sentence cuts though him, chillingly precise and delivered with clipped calm. He opens his eyes and gropes in the pocket of his abandoned jacket for his spectacles, slipping them on and bringing Pete’s face into sharp focus. He supposes he looks rather ridiculous, streaked with fruit juice and naked but for his glasses and yet he can’t find it in him to care.

“Tell you what?” he asks with as much casual indifference as he can muster. Oh, he knows precisely what Pete is referring to and that the conversation is as inevitable as the tide and yet… Well, he finds he would prefer to feign ignorance for at least a moment longer.

“You’re to be married.” It isn’t delivered as a question so Patrick chooses not to answer, knees drawn to his chest as he stares at the lake rather than meet Pete’s eyes. “You didn’t think to tell me?”

“It’s…” he trails off, thoughtful with it. What _is_ it, exactly? “It’s a trivial matter.”

“Trivial?” Pete repeats, as though he can’t quite believe how incredibly, boldly stupid Patrick actually is. Patrick rather wonders the same himself as he blinks through the fog of poor vision and blinding brightness of sunlight on lake water. “You’re to be _married,_ how could that be anything but the very opposite of fucking _trivial?”_

“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, sharp with reprove, the words barked out far more briskly than he intends. “It’s nothing more than a whim of my father’s to keep up with his friends, I — ”

_“Married_ , Patrick,” Pete snaps — though he leaves _you fucking fool_ unsaid, Patrick very much hears it anyway.

They lapse into resentful silence for a moment, enough time for Patrick to find it utterly and entirely unfair that Pete should seem so determined to hold this whole business against him personally. As though Patrick were free to make different choices or to follow a different path.

“She will be my Lady,” Pete continues softly. Patrick blinks at him, stomach fisted tight in some chilled grasp. Pete refuses to meet his eyes, tracing his fingertip along the edge of the blanket though Patrick doesn’t miss the way his shoulders shake on each inhalation. “You would really expect me on my knees, sucking your cock in the stable block at eleven, then presenting myself to drive her to lunch at twelve?”

In honesty, Patrick had given the whole unpleasant situation very little thought beyond the conversation with his father. He had foolishly hoped that if he ignored it, like an errant wasp at a garden party, that it might simply go away and no longer bother him. He reaches out to touch Pete’s shoulder, to feel the warmth of satin-smooth skin beneath his hand but Pete speaks before he can reach.

“I can’t do it,” he mutters, voice clipped and drained free of further emotion. “You’ll be hers and… It wouldn’t be right.”

Panic seizes Patrick’s heart, the flip-flop of it in his chest uncomfortably fast as he grasps for Pete’s hand once more, “My dear, you can’t possibly mean that. I — I don’t… Would you so readily sentence me to a life of loneliness? This is… it’s _nothing,_ I promise you, my wife will — ”

“Your wife,” Pete repeats quietly, finally meeting Patrick’s eyes with his own gold-swirled gaze. “Your _wife,_ Patrick. You’ll make vows to her before God, _with my body I thee worship_ , do you know what that means?”

Patrick knows exactly what it means, he’s not stupid regardless of what Pete may believe.

“He can force me to marry,” Patrick begins. “But he can’t force me into her bed.”

“Don’t you think everyone will expect an heir?” Pete arches an eyebrow and Patrick feels sick. This whole situation — whilst painfully boring and desperately awkward — had never really struck him as particularly life-altering. He realises, with a slow, cold slide of dread down his spine, that this can’t possibly be as straightforward as merely welcoming a woman into the house and leaving her to entertain herself whilst he continues his life as it always has been.

“Perhaps, just once, I could.…” he trails off and stares at his feet in miserable silence as Pete barks a laugh. “Just once.”

“Supposing it takes more than _just once?”_ Pete’s eyes are not smiling though his lips curve in a grim parody of mirth. “Do you really understand so little about how these things work, you really are — ”

“A fool, yes,” Patrick feels uncomfortably close to tears, eyes burning sharply with each rapid blink. “I’m the idiotic molly who’s never considered these things. Must you be so very — _unkind_ about it?”

Silence stretches between them, the heat from before washed to a wasteland of icy fury as they sit, close enough that the awkwardness of it threatens to break them apart. Patrick shivers, suddenly chilled, and cocks his head, considering the best way to make peace and put this unpleasantness behind them, at least for the rest of the afternoon. Pete continues before he can speak, voice low with menace and weighted with words designed to hurt.

“Besides,” there’s a sneer to his timbre, lip curled with it. “Don’t you think she’ll expect her husband to fulfil his marital duties in the bedroom? For pleasure, if nothing more. How will she feel if she’s the only lady at the bridge table that can’t complain about her husband coming to her bed far too often? Come along, Patrick, you’re a Marquess, she won’t object if you roll her over and fuck her like you do me…”

“Stop it,” Patrick begs; the afternoon is burned to ashes around them, the glow of heated touch cooled with a flick of dark-drawn amber eyes. “Please, just — ”

“Although that’s not what you’re most fond of, is it?” Pete pushes him a little further, crowding him with thoughts he doesn’t want to have, images of a marital bed he has no intention of gracing with his presence. “I wonder if her fingers will be enough for you, if she’ll satisfy you that way or — ”

“Enough!” Pete falls suddenly, blissfully silent as Patrick heats crimson with unspent rage and embarrassment. Quiet resentment radiates from Pete and Patrick wonders, hopelessly confused, why on earth he’s saying such truly terrible things. He speaks as though he thinks Patrick’s feelings are nothing but a trivial matter, that the decade they’ve spent together in every sense but the ones that matter in the most practical of ways mean nothing at all.

“Perhaps I’ll get married myself,” Pete rolls to his feet and reaches for his underthings, tugging them over his hips and lacing them in place. Patrick fumbles for his own as his cheeks blaze with fury. They’re creased, dusted with dirt from the ground. He yanks them up regardless as Pete continues, voice low and melodious. “I’m an age for it, wouldn’t you agree? A few children in those rooms in the coach house, a good woman in my bed… Yes, I can rather imagine myself with that life.”

No. No, that doesn’t suit Patrick at all. The very thought of Pete with someone else, with a _wife_ in the bed that Patrick bought for him — bought for _them_ — the image makes him sting sharp with bitter jealousy. Pete — _his_ Pete — as nothing more than the stable master, hat tipped to Patrick when he climbs into the carriage to accompany his wife to some dreadfully boring event. It doesn’t help that Patrick knows the arrangement would suit Pete, he can still recall the unbuttoned shirt in the stables, his hand lost beneath the maid’s skirt as he’d kissed her with breathless need. His chest aches with it and he bites away the urge to rage and shout, anger sunk in the press of teeth into the curve of his lower lip. He’s barely dressed as he begins to stride back towards Petronius, neckcloth, waistcoat and jacket abandoned on the ground and if Pete hopes to see hurt in his eyes as he glances at him, he makes sure to deny him the pleasure.

“You can imagine that life outside of Badminton House,” he informs him crisply. “I can assure you, if you attempt to take revenge on me like some kind of… spiteful child, I shan’t hesitate to dismiss you without a character. I wish you luck finding a position elsewhere.”

If he imagined before the words left his lips that it would give him some sense of satisfaction to see hurt fire across Pete’s eyes, then he is sorely disappointed. It’s Patrick who’s left feeling like a vindictive little boy, hurling insults and threats designed to shatter Pete, to remind him which of them is the master and which the servant. It’s not what Patrick _wants_ , not what he means but it’s so hard to apologise when it’s never been expected of him, hard to find the words of gentle adoration when they were never spoken to him.

Instead, he commits to the anger and embarrassment and strides to his horse, saddling him quickly as Pete struggles to dress, struggles to gather the remnants of what should have been an afternoon of just the two of them. Ruined, brought to a crashing halt by a situation Patrick can’t control — though he would dearly love to — oh, _why_ doesn’t Pete understand?

He mounts easily, a practiced spring from his toe that sets him in the saddle, heels already sharp in Petronius’ sides even as he gropes for his second stirrup, kicking the stallion into a hard gallop. Pete shouts from behind him, something about not driving him so hard but Patrick has no patience to hear him.

It’s only when he’s alone but for the thunder of hooves beneath him that he can truly allow himself to feel the acute agony that losing Pete sparks in his chest. The pain is almost exquisite, a blade slicing the aching pulse of his heart, enough to spark tears that he allows to fall, the breeze whipping past his face sufficient to dry them before they can roll from his jaw and stain his skin with sea spray sadness.

By the time he clatters into the yard, the clank of steel on cobblestone enough to summon the head groom from the stables, Petronius is streaked white with sweat that matches the slick bloom that coats Patrick’s skin. He dismounts without a word, thrusting the reins into Trohman’s hands and heading for the house. He shall have Hurley run him a bath, he decides, rinse away the sticky residue of sweat and whatever else lingers against his skin. Perhaps if he physically washes it away, the memory of the pain in Pete’s eyes will dull a little.

Of course, it’s inevitable that his father stops him almost as soon as he enters the house.

“Worcester?” he calls over his shoulder as he heads to his study, voice sharp in a way that suggests he won’t be argued with. “Where the devil have you been? Come along at once.”

“Can’t it wait?” Patrick asks plaintively, his patience is wearing sorely thin. His father hasn’t spoken to him since their conversation about the engagement, keeping a quiet distance that Patrick finds unsettling. Not because he wishes to discuss the wedding, oh no, but rather that he is concerned by his father’s failure to do the very same thing.

“It can’t, I’m afraid,” his father sighs, as though the forced conversation is as uncomfortable for him as it is for Patrick. He follow him into his study nonetheless, riding boots thudding against the floor. He sincerely hopes there’s some errant horseshit lodged to the soles to stain the expensive rug beneath his feet. “It’s rather important.”

On the desk, ranged on fine velvet against the dark mahogany, sit an array of glittering bands of shining gold. Tokens of love and promises of a lifetime to many men. Shackles to Patrick.

“I told you I wouldn’t discuss the damn wedding any further,” Patrick is halfway towards the door.

“Patrick,” the sharp bark of his name brings him up short, has him slouching back on his heel like an insolent boy, shaking with a sigh that shudders through him like ice. “I had Hurley fetch the family jewels. You’ll select one for your fiancée and cease this… petulance. It’s hardly befitting.”

Patrick gives the velvet studded with gold and diamonds, with rubies and sapphires and glittering garnets only the briefest of cursory considerations, eyes flicking over it with lazy disinterest. He looks up, meets his father’s gaze with blazing defiance and, without even glancing down, closes his fingers around the first ring they touch.

“This one,” he mutters, pressing it into his father’s palm.

“You didn’t even look,” his father objects as Patrick feels his jaw tighten. He has never been one for ridiculous displays of violence but right now he would dearly like to punch something. “This is — ”

“This one,” he insists, thrusting it forward once more.

This time, when he turns to leave the study, his father makes no attempt to stop him. The old man can go hang for all Patrick can bring himself to care.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying it so far. Comments, kudos or just a friendly hello over on Tumblr? You can find me [here.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sn1tchesandtalkers)
> 
> See you all next week (hopefully!) for more post-Regency adventures!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Patrick meets his fiancée.
> 
> Let's see how that works out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back to Victorian England! 
> 
> Another wonderful piece of artwork by [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) be sure to go and check out the rest of her art [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/) She's done some amazing but um... rather NSFW artwork to go along with this piece so please, let me know if you'd like to see them!

“Well,” Patrick asks softly, arms spread and palms forward, heels brought sharply together with elegant grace. “How do I look?”

He knows that he’s obnoxiously _London_ in his high collar and well-cut jacket, every fabric decadent from the pristine press of his trousers to the intricate embroidery of his waistcoat. His hair is softly curled, swept back and golden, his jaw freshly shaved but for the neatly trimmed line of his sideburns.

“Very good _,_ sir,” Hurley murmurs in his professional monotone, eyes fixed somewhere over Patrick’s left shoulder. “Eminently _eligible.”_

“And you, Napper,” he addresses the King Charles spaniel sprawled across his counterpane.  “Do you approve?”

Coffee coloured eyes regard him dolefully as the dog tucks his nose neatly between his paws. A gift from Pete for his twenty-first birthday, Patrick was enchanted by the pup from the moment he laid eyes on him. His father was not quite so enamoured and his good humour ran dry when Patrick insisted on naming the dog Napoleon. He smiles in delight at the memory — really, his father is rather too much fun to toy with. Napper yawns, thumps his tail twice against the bed linen and closes his eyes, as though the sheer effort of watching Patrick bathe, shave and dress has been the most tremendous bore.

“You’re as uncultured as your Papa,” he informs him with an affectionate ruffle of silken ears. “Though I’ll wager a tidy sum that he’s never rolled in horse shit. Although…”

“Must he sleep on your _bed_ , sir?” Hurley sighs, deeply long-suffering. “The dander? Your cough?”

“Nonsense!” Patrick declares, smoothing a hand over the shoulder of his jacket as he admires himself in the mirror for a final time. A dab of Spanish Leather cologne behind each ear — Oh! The memories of Oxford that it stirs! — and he considers himself ready for formal presentation. “Well, shall we begin my tediously drawn out death by unremarkable marital obscurity?”

Hurley stands at the door, handle grasped in a white-gloved hand as Patrick hesitates for just a moment, a stutter of something he thinks may be fear skittering cold at the base of his spine. He blinks, reaches into his breast pocket and extracts his spectacles — such intricate silverwork, such delicate ophthalmology in the lenses that glitter and sparkle — sliding them onto his nose and blinking as everything eases back into sharp focus. He loathes them entirely, of course, detests the memories of the jeers of the other boys at school, the way they detract from the charming sparkle of his eyes. But they do rather ease the headaches that plague him so he supposes there are benefits.

“Andrew?” he asks softly, in the moment before the door opens. The valet quirks an eyebrow in surprise at the use of his Christian name, but doesn’t comment beyond a questioning smile. “Do you suppose… Is it possible for a man to be happy in a marriage, if that man can never love his bride as he should?”

It’s a ridiculous question to pose to a member of staff, of that much Patrick is perfectly aware and yet… and yet, he has few friends in life that he feels close to. No confidants beyond Pete and he’s barely spoken a word to him since their ride to the lake.

“Sir, if I may be entirely frank,” Hurley begins after a beat of silence, Patrick nods for him to continue. “You have quite a remarkable flair for the dramatic. It’s an engagement, not the steps to the guillotine. I imagine, should you put your mind to it, that you can take to married life rather splendidly.”

“Perhaps,” Patrick frowns down at a smudge on his left shoe.  “But, Pete…”

“Lewis is a grown man,” Hurley opens the door with a befitting level of courtesy as he consults his pocket watch. They’re to leave at precisely ten o’clock for the first leg of their coach journey to London. “Do not weep for him, sir. Now, if you’re _quite_ ready...”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” he says with airy indifference. Patrick is not ready. Patrick is actually completely terrified.

There’s a note in his pocket, sent late last night by a footman, his own beautiful copperplate rolling luxuriously across the paper; _won’t you join me?_ Pete returned it still sealed. Patrick tucked it beneath his pillow and devoted his night to tossing and turning with fretful wakefulness, sleep eluding him with dark thoughts that yanked him back from its blissful precipice each time. Instead, he lay awake and counted the hours until dawn crept through the heaviness of the drapes.

He’s busied himself for the past few days with his tailor, ensuring his attire for the visit is suitable and ignoring the ache in his chest that compelled him to take a stroll to the stables. He thought about it — Napper could use the exercise after all — but his father’s eyes caught his over lunch each day and he abandoned the notion entirely. He’s unsure why he feels quite so traitorous, standing at the window of the galleried landing and watching Pete deal with the clutch of readied coaches. It isn’t _his_ fault, damn it all, he’s _tried_ to explain. He’s not given to such pointless fancies as guilt and yet…

He pushes it aside as he descends the staircase to the hall, his top hat pressed to his hands by Hurley. He tips it to his mother, returns her smile as she smooths a gloved hand over his cheek.

“How do I look?” he asks softly. “Will I do, mother?”

“Shockingly handsome,” she informs him with a low laugh tinged sweet with sadness. “Any lady would be lucky to have you. Your father showed me the ring you’d picked out.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her he won’t discuss it further, to snap his irritation with brisk authority and sweep out to his waiting coach. But she’s his _mother_ , he simply can’t bear to hurt her feelings unnecessarily as she takes his arm and draws him to the side, fingers dipping with ladylike elegance into her clutch for a neat, velvet case. She hands it to him with a smile shining bright with hope, watching eagerly as he flicks it open with his thumb to reveal a gold band set simply with a princess cut diamond, sapphires framing the bezel. It’s exquisite, even Patrick can see that.

“The one you picked was horrid,” she advises him crisply as he closes the box. “Your bride to be will be _much_ more pleased with that.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, tucking it neatly into his breast pocket, precisely where it can burn into the traitorous ache of his heart. “Where the devil is his Lordship, anyway?”

“I do hope you won’t be using language like that in London,” she raises an eyebrow in disapproval. “Beaufort is already waiting in the coach.”

“Complaining about my terrible timekeeping already?” He grins broadly and pulls on his gloves, accepting his cane from Hurley and admiring himself briefly in the looking glass held up for his final inspection. Napper sniffs around his shoes with disinterest.

“Patrick,” he glances at her once more, stomach lurching at the tenderness in her gaze, “I want you to know… I think it’s rather cruel, forcing your hand like this. If you meet her, darling, and you think she would make you unhappy, I want you to ask your father for another match.”

“I’m sure she’ll be a delight,” Patrick wishes his voice didn’t shake slightly as he speaks, that the marble beneath his feet would stop lurching quite so unsteadily. He straightens, squares his shoulders and offers his mother his arm with his brightest, most charming grin. “Shall we?”

They descend the sweeping stone steps at the front of the house and walk towards the waiting carriages. At the door to the lead carriage, the one that will carry Patrick and his parents to London, Pete stands, back straight and eyes fixed on the distance as he raises his hat. Pete looks rather splendid in his formal attire; white breeches that cling to his slim thighs, his heavy coat gleaming with the polished brass of dozens of buttons and his topper neat upon his curls. Patrick is so used to seeing him in faded yellow breeches, in cotton shirts and a battered leather waistcoat that it’s almost scandalous to see him looking quite so dashing. Patrick tries to catch his eye, to capture a friendly smile, the ghost of a wink but Pete refuses to cooperate, concentrating intently on helping Lady Beaufort into the carriage.

Lord Beaufort’s eyes meet Patrick’s from his position within the carriage, sharp with warning that makes Patrick’s chest hurt. He stoops to catch hold of Napper, lifting him up and into the carriage despite his father’s pointed glare. In that moment, standing in front of the house with his father firing daggers at him from the sharpness of his sea-blue eyes and Pete holding the door open with nothing more than formal impatience, Patrick doesn’t think he’s ever felt lonelier.

“My Lord?” Pete prompts, gloved hand wrapped around the handle as Patrick stares at him, bold with defiance, daring him to continue to look away. Finally, Pete flicks a glance that’s bald with searing pain hidden under a thin veneer of feigned disinterest. Patrick’s stomach cramps, the force of it enough to take his breath away as he fumbles for the words he barely remembers.

"Du sprichst — ” he stumbles over the words, with the grammar, with the vocabulary he’s only ever remembered for Pete. It always seemed amusing to discuss filth and fantasy in the open presence of those around them, safely cocooned in the _no one else knows._ Pete’s lips twist into the vaguest ghost of a mocking smirk and Patrick fires with a blush, trying again and giving up on grammar. Direct translation will have to do. “Du wirst nicht mal Reden zu mir?"

_You will not even speak to me?_

“Später.” Patrick almost wants to laugh. Almost. As though the word sounds any different to _later_. As though it isn’t obvious to anyone within earshot that he’s been dismissed like a fucking _errand boy_ by the stable master. “Sir, we need to leave promptly if we’re to keep to your father’s schedule.”

“Pete,” he implores softly, gloved hand itching to brush against the coarse curve of Pete’s sideburns, to pull him close and breathe in the scent of him. He doesn’t miss the glance that flashes between Pete and Trohman, waiting to climb to the box of the second carriage and he burns with the humiliation of it as Pete sighs deeply, as though the very notion of Patrick’s presence irritates him.

“Sir,” he begins curtly as Patrick struggles under the weight of every pair of eyes in the immediate area, the judgement sharp and palpable. “If you would just…”

“Get in the coach, Worcester, for God’s sake,” his father snaps, clearly bored with the whole to do. “You’re making an utter fool of yourself.”

“Am I?” The question is addressed directly to Pete, daring him to deny it, to offer Patrick a smile, a reassuring squeeze of the arm as he guides him towards the steps. Nothing. Patrick’s heart aches as he gives in and climbs into the carriage.  

Pete doesn’t spare him a glance through the glass as he closes the door with a sharp click, the heavy thud of his boots reverberating through Patrick’s skull as he climbs up to the box. As the carriage rolls forward, the lurch and bump of it jolting them unsteady for a moment, the silence rings palpably between them, cold with awkward accusation. In this moment, Patrick _loathes_ his father, despises him with a burning passion that heats his skin and prickles sweat along his spine.

He sees the nudge his mother’s elbow makes to his father’s ribs as Patrick fumbles for his copy of _Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque_ , sees the way her eyes widen with matronly threat that has his father cowed back into his seat. “Worcester, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — ”

“Father, truly, I am _not_ in the mood.”

The silence falls once more, cold and oppressive. If the old man suspects for a moment that Patrick will simply quietly accept his lot to make this easy on him, he intends to prove him wholly, unequivocally wrong.

~*~

“Well, it’s just that you’ve been a right miserable bugger for the past week,” Joe declares, easing off his boots with a groan and flopping back onto the narrow bedstead. “No offence. About the _bugger_ part, you know.”

“Very droll,” Pete rolls his eyes with the insinuation that Joe is anything _but_ amusing, “and I’m _not_ miserable, it’s just…”

“You’re not happy his little Lordship’ll be dipping his wick elsewhere?” Joe quirks his eyebrows with a grin. Pete has always thought of himself as fond of Joe. Right now, he’s rather fond of the idea of punching him. “Get yourself a _wife_ , Lewis, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander… Hang about, _which_ of you is the goose?”

Pete decides a grimace is as good as an answer as he pours water from the chipped enamel jug into the mismatched bowl on the washstand. Hands cupped, he scoops it onto his face and the back of his neck, feels it slither — chill-damp and refreshing — in snaking droplets down his bare back and shoulders. The day has been hot, his face left flushed from the sun and the thickness of the wool coat painting him faintly pink even now, stripped to the waist and barefoot.

He’s considering his comeback as Joe reclines on one of the beds tucked in a room above the stable block, the sticky air thick with the smell of horses and leather. But his whip-sharp response is stolen from his lips by a brisk knock on the door. Hurley doesn’t wait for a response — valet to the heir is far enough up the pecking order that he doesn’t really need to — before he pushes the door open and steps inside.

“Lewis,” he begins, as though anyone might imagine he’d been looking for Joe. He extends his hand, a sealed note offered between his fingertips with a wrinkle of his nose as though he finds the whole thing unimaginably distasteful. “From the Marquess.”

“No thank you,” Pete refuses to offer the paper even a cursory glance. He doesn’t want to hurt Patrick but the alternative seems to be hurting himself and he isn’t entirely driven to walk that road either. On the bed, Joe’s eyes bounce back and forth with the greedy anticipation of a man watching lawn tennis, his grin a sparkle of mischief that Pete would — may God help him — dearly love to slap.

“You didn’t even read it,” Hurley argues, a touch of unprofessional petulance to his tone. “If I take this back to him sealed, he’ll — ”

 _“What_ , Hurley?” Pete snaps, his patience wearing sorely thin. “What _exactly_ will he do? Dismiss me without a character? I’ve performed my duties for the day, I believe I’m now free to do as I wish and I fully intend to spend it at the public house down the road, _not_ answering ridiculous notes like a bloody schoolboy.”

“You could do me the dubious favour of breaking the seal if nothing else.” Hurley’s good humour at the situation has clearly run out as he tries, once more to thrust the paper into Pete’s hand. It’s good quality stationary, heavy and thick, the press of Patrick’s seal into the wax a sharp retort of its own. “I’d break it myself but I’ve more honour than that. Just open the bloody thing and I’ll take it back at once.”

“More honour than _me_ , you mean,” Pete scoffs, reaching for his shirt. It’s uncomfortably damp beneath the arms and he would dearly like to wear a fresh one but the clean shirt he has is for tomorrow. So he can look appropriately well-heeled for the damned Stumphs. His lips thin as his scowl deepens. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I think it would be best if you left.”

“And what will I tell his Lordship?” Hurley demands, childish annoyance carved into his features.

“Tell him,” Pete begins defiantly. “Tell him to shove the bloody note up his _arse_ for all I care.”

“Bugger me, the man’s got spirit!” Joe laughs from the bed. “I suspect that’s not what the Marquess wants you to shove up his arse, though.”

 _“Enough_ Trohman,” Pete points a finger at him with as much authority as he can muster given that he’s shirtless and dripping water onto the threadbare rug. “Don’t forget that _I_ can dismiss _you_.”

Silence falls between the three for a moment, cold and uncomfortable. Pete takes the opportunity to shrug back into his shirt as Hurley shifts from foot to foot. As he fastens the buttons with haste he takes a second to thank God that no one will be able to see the traitorous pounding of his heart beneath his ribs under the linen. Eventually, Hurley gusts a sigh and shrugs delicately, his lower lip caught momentarily between his teeth.

“Very well,” he smiles — a small, rueful grin — and ducks his head. “I shall let the Marquess know. Perhaps…” Pete glances at him with a raised eyebrow as he trails off. Hurley seems to ponder for a moment before continuing. “Perhaps I shall join you for a drink once I’m dismissed. I’ll need it, I’m sure.”

“I’ll stand you an ale,” Pete laughs, hollowed out and echoing through the empty throb of his chest. “You should hurry back, before he sends out a search party.”

With a nod and a click of the door, Hurley is gone and Pete reminds himself to breathe again as he unbuttons his breeches and shuffles them down. Joe wrinkles his nose in distaste as Pete sprawls back on the mattress — lumpy, uncomfortable, exactly the kind of mattress a serving man should be used to — and folds his hands into the sweat-damp curls at the back of his head.

“Put on your nightshirt, would you?” Joe shudders lightly. “I’m _not_ of his Lordship’s… persuasion. Besides, that beastly thing on your belly is like a bloody penny dreadful. I thought you were going on the ale, anyway?”

“Haven’t the stomach for it,” Pete grumbles, scratching at his tattoo absently.

They lapse into silence as Joe settles into his mattress, as the rhythm of their breathing steadies and matches. Pete has never had quite so much time to himself, never spent as long staring at walls or ceilings as he has since he began avoiding Patrick. His nights never seemed so difficult to fill when they were lost to laughter, to the press of Patrick’s back to his chest as they whispered their secrets to one another in the darkness of the coach house. Now, time seems interminable, particularly here where he has no distraction in the form of his books, no option to waste hours in the stable on pointless tasks.

He thinks Joe may already be sleeping, his breaths drawn long and slow even as the birds conduct a melody outside their window. The evenings are long at this time of year, rose-gold light casting the room in an ethereal glow as the warm breeze rolls languorously over his skin. Soon it will be twilight, the light hazing purple whilst the lords and ladies drink their port. Patrick will move to the card table, as he always does, will gamble sums that would keep Pete and his mother in comfort for the rest of their lives without so much as a raised eyebrow. Oh, it’s not that Pete resents him his indulgences but he must remind himself that they’re from different worlds, may as well be different species for all their paths should cross.

He blames the luxury of his education, spending time with Patrick and his governess then going away to boarding school as though he were equal with the men he now serves. He’d still been flushed with it, still dizzy with the way the boys at school had referred to him as _Wentz_ , when Patrick arrived home from university. He was foolhardy and carefree when he took the Marquess to his bed, willing to forget that they would never be the same, that he would never be more than _less than._

He hadn’t intended to fall in love, either.

“Joseph…?” he trails off for a moment as he stares at the crisscross of blackened beams above them. “Do you suppose an… arrangement outside of a marriage could ever be satisfying?”

“Should you fuck his Lordship once he’s wed, you mean?” Joe’s sleep-slurred and insolent, awake since dawn and ready for Pete to quiet his endless rambling and let him rest. “Can’t see why not. But why would you _want_ to? Find a nice girl, raise a few sons, I’ll bet tuppence to a ha’penny you’ll find yourself happier.”

“Yes,” Pete murmurs. “I suppose you’re right.”

It doesn’t take long for Joe’s breathing to even and steady in sleep but it takes far longer for Pete to follow him into slumber.

He’s startled into brain-buzzing wakefulness hours later, the room robed in darkness and silent but for his heartbeat ringing in his ears. He blinks once, twice, swallows the cotton-dry sourness on his tongue as he waits, drawn taut and fluttered with half-recalled nightmares, for something to happen.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

Pete yelps, swinging out at the voice by his ear, fist connecting with something soft and cotton-coated, something that grunts in pain as Pete scrabbles up in the bed, eyes wide and fist drawn back in defence.  A groan splits the room, a shuffle of stumbled steps as whoever it is flops to the bed and Pete is close — oh, so close — to throwing a second punch, blinking grit from his eyes as he struggles against the pinned-tight prison of his sheets.

“ _Patrick_?” he gasps, hand drawn with moth-to-flame need to the small of Patrick’s back as he doubles over, hands folded defensively over his crotch. “What the devil are _you_ doing here? You scared me half to death, you bloody…” he trails off, eyes on Joe as he blinks, mussed with sleep and wide-eyed with confusion from the other bed. “That is to say, my Lord, I — I only…”

“Good _God_ , Lewis,” he groans, panting breath hissed harsh over lips that curve lush and sweet in the moonlight. He smells of port, of cigar smoke and pompous men ranged around card tables. “Do you make it a habit, punching innocent men in the plums?”

“Why are you here at this hour?” Pete demands, his temper flaring like so much gun powder. “Would you have me prepare a horse for you? I’m afraid you seem rather too worse for wear to take the saddle, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Bloody well stop it, would you?” Patrick snaps, still nursing between his legs as though Pete hit him hard enough to actually hurt him. Maybe he did, it was difficult to judge in the near darkness and blooming fear of scared-from-sleep. “I wouldn’t have _had_ to come here if you’d taken a moment to read the note I sent you, would I? We could have been in my chamber as we speak on what is, quite frankly, the most comfortable mattress I’ve ever laid on. I could’ve been on my knees for you by now, ready to suck your — ”

There’s a frantic burst of forced-lung hacking from the bed two feet away as Joe presents his best impersonation of tuberculosis. Patrick pauses, head cocked as he considers the groom as though he’s never seen him before in his life, “Who the devil are you and what the dickens are you doing in here?”

“Trohman, sir. Um… My Lord. Sir. My Lord, sir,” Joe stammers, wide eyes streaming as the cough becomes rather more genuine and Pete begins to wonder if he ought to send for the doctor. Perhaps once they’ve revived Joe they can examine _him_ for hysteria as it seems to be bubbling away nicely in his chest. “A groom, sir. I am. Your groom. For twelve years.”

“Ah, _Trohman_. Of course, _splendid_ ,” Patrick glows with drunken recognition, brandy-blazed eyes sparking bright with bonhomie for a moment as he points to the door with a vague sort of wave of his hand. “My good man, I have urgent reason to talk with Lewis here, so if you wouldn’t mind _awfully_ just granting us a moment or two of privacy. It’s about... horses,” Patrick blinks, as though considering the validity of his words and finding them satisfactory as he nods before continuing. “Yes. Horses.”

Patrick gestures grandly at the door once more, clearly half cut and untroubled by the fact that he’s about to eject poor Joe from his bed at what Pete assumes is an hour that has long since kissed farewell to midnight. He rolls his eyes and swings his legs over the bed, urging a fumbling Joe back to his mattress with a long-suffering sigh as Patrick blinks at him. He tries not to be thoroughly charmed by the way golden lashes flutter around unfocused eyes. Patrick has always been particularly delightful when he’s three sheets to the wind.

“But…” Patrick begins, brow creased as he appears to concentrate very closely on organising the words from his mouth. “Ah. But…”

“Trohman needs his rest, my Lord,” Pete soothes gently, shuffling into his breeches and boots and shrugging on yesterday’s shirt. It feels stale, damp under the arms and against his back and thoroughly down at heel next to Patrick’s evening finery. “Come along, let’s take a walk around the yard, get you some fresh air, hmm?”

Patrick’s leer should be irritating rather than endearing as Pete steers him from the room with a mouthed apology at Joe cast back over his shoulder. They take the stairs slowly — the last thing Pete wants it to find himself responsible for the untimely death of the future Duke of Beaufort — until they find themselves in the lane that curves behind the inn, the scent of honeysuckle cloyingly sweet on the warm night air.

Pete is fired hot and heated with the annoyances he wants to snap at Patrick, with the recriminations and the reminders that he is a man of his own will and not to be summoned and chased and castigated like Patrick’s fucking lapdog. The words sear his tongue, they blaze him with fire that squares his shoulders and has him reaching to rake a furious hand through the mess of his curls as he draws breath to launch his tirade.

He falls silent as Patrick — flushed pink with alcohol and perhaps something more — catches his hand on the upswing, as he laces the gold and marble contrast of their fingers together and brushes a kiss to Pete’s knuckles. Right there, on a public lane. As though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You would not speak to me,” Patrick whispers as Pete stares at him, miserable with the accusation of it. “At the carriage this morning or — here. Tonight. I… I’m not certain, but I think you’ve been avoiding me.”

“My Lord, I — ”

“No,” Patrick cuts him off, hand raised and face twisted into a grimace of pain. “Not your _Lord_ , your — your _Patrick.”_

“Patrick,” he sighs, settling back onto the low wall. “I’m not avoiding _you_ so much as I’m avoiding… _us.”_ Patrick quirks an eyebrow and his eyes cross slightly, a soft hiccuping noise squeaking past his lips. He really is thoroughly agreeable as a drunk. “That is to say, I, ah — I thought everything that needed to be said was said by the lake. I can’t be what you want me to be any longer.”

“What’s this _about_ , Peter?” he asks, his voice sad and soft and tinged with longing. “We’ve been… happy these past ten years, haven’t we?”

“You’re to be married,” Pete begins, teeth clenched until they ache, as Patrick cuts over him once more.

“I was _always_ to be married, since I was placed into my father’s arms,” he’s far more sober than he was a moment ago, blinking the after-dinner drinks away with eyes flamed high with furious miscomprehension. “I’m the bloody — the Marquess of Worcester, I’ll be the Duke of Beaufort and… surely you — you _knew._ I thought you _understood_.”

“Understood _what_ , exactly,” Pete snarls, knuckles grinding to the stonework beneath him until he’s sure the skin will break and bleed and cast his clenched fist in crimson. “That I would devote myself to you for my youth then wave you away to your bride? That I would continue to fuck you whilst you fuck her, whoever she is, all the while your servant?” Patrick is flinching back with each word, each syllable as shock sharp as a blow, “Did you think this is the very best I could imagine for myself out of life? The easy fuck of some pompous, _arrogant_ , self-aggrandising — ”

“Easy _fuck_?” Patrick hisses, melancholy bleeding swiftly to fury as he rounds on Pete, as he presses forward and shoves between his thighs, his pale hands fisted in the plackets of Pete’s shirt as he brings their faces unbearably close. There’s a fleck of spit from his lips with each snarled word hissed through gritted teeth, fire blazing in the depths of his eyes. “You speak as though I don’t care for you, as though I’ve never… As though I see you as nothing but a pointless plaything, fit to be discarded. _Ten years_ , Pete, a bloody _decade_ of my life and yours and that’s truly what you believe?”

“You speak as though you _do_ care for me!” Pete’s voice is rising, loud enough to rouse the servants from their sleep above the stables of the post house, perhaps even loud enough to wake the lords and ladies in their beds. Oh, he certainly hopes so. “Ten years — as you rightly point out, _my Lord_ — ten _fucking_ years and not a word of tenderness from you.”

This appears to unsettle Patrick, he stammers unsteadily as he blinks in a wide-eyed parody of confusion at Pete, as his grip slackens half a hair and he slumps back onto his heel with a shuddering exhale, “What — what do you mean _no word of tenderness_?”

Pete shivers, though the night air is warm as it ruffles his shirt and stirs the smell of sweat and horses between them. Patrick is still close enough that he could touch their mouths together with little effort, instead he catches a handful of Patrick’s lapel, crushes the fine linen in the grasp of his fist and narrows his eyes.

“Precisely what I say,” he spits. “A decade together and not once have you expressed more than passing fondness for me and only when I’ve had my cock up your arse.”

“No,” Patrick shakes his head with a sneer, as though Pete is quite the most ridiculous fool he’s had the displeasure of engaging in conversation. Perhaps that’s the truth. “I’ve told you many a time, you’re very dear to me and — ”

“Oh yes,” Pete laughs, cold and mirthless, arm cast expansively to the side. “I’m _dear_ to you, you’re _fond_ of me, you’ve rather a _weakness_ for me. Dear God, Patrick, don’t you understand?”

There’s a guttering flicker in Patrick’s eyes, the stuttering brilliance of a candle flaring to life as realisation dawns — bright and beautiful — across his features. He pauses, head cocked and mouth set to a pensive frown as he strokes a hand over the curve of Pete’s cheek. Pete can hear the song of the nightingales above and behind them, the flutter of the breeze through the hedgerows stirring the smell of wild garlic and jasmine. Patrick’s eyes seem to glow as he reaches up with his free hand and cups Pete’s face, drawing him down so that their foreheads touch.

“You silly old boy,” he whispers, breath a warm and woozy rush over Pete’s mouth, a reminder of the alcohol he’s consumed but he’s never looked more sober or sincere. “You honestly imagine that I don’t love you?”

“You’ve never said it,” Pete mutters, gruff-voiced and thick-tongued as his lips tingle with the need to taste the sugared curve of Patrick’s mouth. “Not once. Still haven’t, if we’re being pedantic.”

“You daft bugger,” Patrick laughs, a smile shot to the stars for a moment before he holds Pete’s gaze once more. “I love you! Of _course_ I bloody well love you!”

“Why did you never say it?” Pete knows he sounds petulant but it seems a reasonable query. Patrick shakes his head slowly, breath still tickling Pete’s lips as he draws a sigh.

“My family are hardly demonstrative,” he shrugs simply. “But I know my parents are fond — ” he breaks off with a chuckle and a shake of his head before continuing, “that they love me. I assumed you knew the same. Now, are you going to say it to me or leave me looking the most dreadful fool in front of the foxes?”

Pete slides a hand around the back of Patrick’s neck in response, tugs him closer so their lips can brush, enticing kisses bitten to eager mouths. He parts his lips and whines encouragement as Patrick presses back between his legs once more, flickering tongue exploring the softness of Patrick’s as they meet, damp and sweet. He has missed this with a desperation that aches, with the loneliness of nights in his bed when they could have been spent in a tangle of skin and need.

“I love you,” he whispers, cock hard in his breeches as Patrick ruts against him. He should feel wary, anyone could round the corner at a moment’s notice, he mustn’t give in to the temptation to shove Patrick to his knees amongst the grass. A sobering thought, an unbidden reminder, eats in at his edges as Patrick’s licks a distracting stripe over his throat. “You’re — you’re still getting married.”

“How many times must I remind you that it means nothing?” Patrick pulls back with a sigh, cheek to Pete’s chest as they lean into one another. For a moment, Pete simply cradles him close, kisses pressed to the crown of his carefully curled hair as he wonders how they’ll steal moments like this with a wife expecting the company of her husband.

Patrick tenses in his arms, pulling back with a sunrise-gold grin as he drops to one knee between Pete’s legs and for a heartbeat — pulse racing — as Patrick arches an eyebrow at the obvious swell of his prick, he wonders if he may be about to receive the first release in several weeks not induced by his own hand. But Patrick is muttering under his breath, tugging at his own hand for a moment or two before fumbling for Pete’s.

“Tomorrow,” he begins, with a serious sort of earnestness painting his features as he blinks up and strokes his fingertips over Pete’s knuckles. “Tomorrow I’ll present a ring chosen by my mother to a woman chosen by my father. I shan’t mean a single promise I make to her. But here, Peter, right here, I intend to demonstrate my true intentions.”

With that he slides his signet ring onto Pete’s little finger. Pete’s hands are larger than Patrick’s, the knuckles more pronounced, and it takes a moment of two for him to work it down until it sits, cool and gleaming and snug with his palm, “Patrick, you can’t...”

“Yes I can,” Patrick insists, suddenly unsteady on his knee, cheek nudged to Pete’s thigh as he laughs softly and Pete’s heart lurches unsteadily in his chest. “I need that ring, Peter,” Pete knows it’s true, Patrick’s seal is hidden on a rotating bezel, required for each document he signs, “Take it. But know that this is me making it clear that I expect you to be close to me for the rest of my life. What do you say, dear boy?”

“Come here, you bloody fool, you’re getting grass stains on your trousers,” Pete huffs, hauling Patrick to his chest once more.

“Would you join me in my chamber?” Patrick offers, sweet and hopeful and between the press of tender kisses. “I — I would like it if you did.”

“Your father…” Pete trails off uncertainly. He has no desire to be dismissed from his post for being found in bed with the heir. He is not naive enough to assume that his Lordship has no idea and yet, at this stage, he has no wish to tempt fate.

“Please?” Patrick whispers. “Nothing… untoward. I swear it. I would just… I’d rather like to hold you.”

Perhaps, in some other time and place, there is another Pete who sits on the wall with another Patrick. Perhaps that Pete is strong enough to say no. But that is another Pete and another Patrick and this Pete can only smile as he cards his fingers through this Patrick’s hair and whispers softly, “Of course, my love.”

~*~

Patrick has never been fond of parties.

At least, Patrick has never been fond of the sorts of parties his father has, over the past few years, insisted he attend to be paraded in front of eligible women. Oh, he was rather fond of the times spent sneaking to the molly house close to the university (before Pete, of course), or the nights spent around a card table with terrible company and good wine. But, he supposes, age has crept up on him rather suddenly and now he finds his favourite evening pastime — well, after the obvious and carnal — is lounging on the settee in Pete’s quarters before the fire with Pete’s head in his lap. He finds overwhelming peace and pleasure in his fingers caught in jet-dark curls as Pete reads aloud to him from whichever novel he’s enjoying at the moment.

“Worcester?” Patrick is torn from his swirling abyss of self-doubt by his father’s voice. He turns, smile in place and head inclined as his father leads a cannonball of a man — as roundly plump and crimson dewed as a tomato stolen from the kitchen garden — towards him. “I would like to make an introduction.”

Patrick braces himself as he glances over the man he presumes is to become his father in law.

“May I introduce my son, Lord Worcester, at least until I shuffle from his mortal coil and he takes his turn at Dukedom.” His father laughs with hearty falseness, neither Patrick nor the other gentleman join in. His father clears his throat and continues with forced bonhomie. “Lord Worcester, I should like to introduce you to Lord Dartmouth.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Patrick says, in tones that suggest it’s rather the very opposite. “Tell me Dartmouth,” the man’s jaw quivers at such an intimate form of address, Patrick smirks. “Why was my father so eager to attend this particular ball?”

“Worcester,” his father’s tone is light with a bite of hidden warning, shoulders stiff and straight. “Lord Dartmouth and I are old school friends, if you can imagine your father being young enough to attend school.”

“Wonderful to meet you,” the Earl — Henry, Patrick thinks he recalls the name Henry — is visibly bristled, his brow misted with sweat that he mops away irritably. None of the three of them believe for a moment that the Earl of Dartmouth finds it a wonder to meet Patrick. At all. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you were in knee breeches.”

“Ah, but the passage of time is a marvellous thing,” Patrick relieves a passing waiter of a glass of champagne and knocks most of it back in one swallow, “here I am, quite grown up.”

“Though fighting adulthood rather splendidly,” his father mutters, the bloom on his cheeks belying quite how much of the marvellous champagne has found its way down his throat already. “Still, boys will be boys, will they not?”

The Earl looks as though he’s reconsidering the idea entirely. Patrick considers this a promising turn of events.

“Perhaps…” Patrick’s father trails off for a moment, a deep breath drawn to steady him. “Perhaps it might be nice if Lord Worcester,” he admires his father for reminding the Earl quite how far up his daughter will be marrying, he really does, “were to make the acquaintance of Lady Victoria?”

“Oh, how thrilling!” Patrick is eyeing the drinks table situated at the far end of the first-floor ballroom of the Earl’s rather lovely townhouse just off Hyde Park. He drags his gaze away, meets the eyes of his father over the Earl’s shoulder with a smirk. “I’m unnaturally unaccustomed to making the acquaintance of young ladies.”

If the Earl understands the implication, he does a wonderful job of pretending he doesn’t. Patrick suspects that the promise of his daughter ensnaring the heir to a sizeable dukedom and even more sizeable fortune goes a long way in holding his tongue. Unfortunately, his father is less inclined to let such things slip and delivers a glare that Patrick swears burns all that it touches. He raises an eyebrow, a silent _what? I’m being entirely charming_ delivered perfectly. His father doesn't fall for it for a moment.

With a long-suffering sigh, he allows himself to be propelled across the room to where the ladies gather. He knows very little of the woman he shall call his fiancée by the end of the evening, only what his father fumbled through hastily in the carriage on the way over. At least it was Trohman that drove them, he doesn’t think he could bear to go through with it if he knew Pete was outside with the horses. He knows that the young lady in question is named Victoria, that she will turn twenty-one at the end of the summer and that — by extension — her parents must have begun to despair of her ever being fit to debut.

Ghastly, Patrick imagines, she will no doubt make the Urie girl seem a delight by comparison.

“Lady Victoria,” the Earl gestures in a way that suggests he never imagined this would be a day that would come. “I have the pleasure of introducing Lord Patrick Stump, Marquess of Worcester. Lord Worcester, my daughter, Lady Victoria.”

As she turns, dark hair caught up in a complicated looking chignon and dress cut beautifully, he admits to being rather pleasantly surprised. She seems… perfectly lovely as she curtsies politely and offers her hand, his lips brushed to her gloved knuckles as he bows. He doesn’t miss the shudder of revulsion as his mouth meets her hand and allows himself to feel momentarily affronted. He’s a handsome man! He deserves at least a moment of admiration based purely on aesthetics before she decides she dislikes him quite so thoroughly based on his personality.

He rallies as the quartet in the corner begin to play a waltz, eyes as friendly and inviting as he can make them be. She is but a girl, he reminds himself sternly, just twenty and about to be married off to a molly for a title.

“A dance, my lady?” he offers, chivalry retrieved and dusted off admirably as she considers his arm as though he has both typhoid and leprosy, her nose wrinkled and eyes barely concealing her distaste.

“Perhaps some other time, sir,” she snaps abruptly. He boggles at her for a moment, wide-eyed and confused, a glance shot to his father that he hopes conveys that she has no reason to treat him with such hostility. If, perhaps, she _knew_ him he could understand, but the girl has barely acknowledged him!

“Lady Victoria,” the Earl squeezes his daughter’s hand, forced jollity doing little to conceal his fury. “I think it would be… appropriate, if you joined Lord Worcester for a dance.”

“How sad for you that I have so little regard for what you consider _appropriate_ , father,” she replies, without glancing at him. Patrick’s interest is piqued — he quite likes this woman, perhaps they can bond over a mutual dislike of their fathers. “Perhaps Lord Worcester might enjoy dancing with one of my cousins.”

“Victoria,” her father barks as his own winces with a look that suggests he had no idea marrying off children would ever be quite so challenging. “A word in private, immediately — ”

“My lady,” Patrick cuts in once more, standing back a little so that she can stand and he may offer his arm. “Perhaps a stroll around the ballroom would be more to your liking? I confess I have little patience for dancing myself.”

“Sir,” she begins (and he chooses not to be offended that she refrains from addressing him as Lord) eyes bright with defiance as the lady she sits with — the Lady Dartmouth, presumably — widens her eyes in shock. “We are both aware of the reason you’re here. We may dispel with the formalities and the ridiculous charade. I will attend with my father when he makes the announcement shortly but until that time I ask — respectfully, sir — that you allow me to spend my last moments of freedom as I choose.”

Patrick is laughably far from inclined to argue with this fierce young woman, bowing once more and excusing himself to hurry to the drinks table. He finds his amusement at their exchange quickly giving way to cold dread. If she will address him in such a manner right there in the ballroom, how might she be with a few months of familiarity and marriage to her name? Suppose she is less than amenable about his time with Pete? Suppose she _forbids_ him from spending time with the stable master? The punchbowl holds little appeal, his need for something stronger close to overwhelming as he gratefully grasps a glass of brandy and considers his options.

The West Indies are supposed to be quite lovely at this time of year. If he discusses things with his father sensibly, arranges a dignified exit from the succession with a reasonable allowance for making himself scarce and providing no further embarrassment… Surely, his father will think it worth it, a few thousand pounds a year in exchange for a son that sends the occasional letter and doesn’t cause any problems.

He catches his mother’s eye across the dancefloor, her smile one of gentle encouragement as she raises her glass in a silent and hopeful toast. He tips his own with a smile he’s sure will crack under the slightest pressure and considers making his way to the garden to take some air.

“Worcester, what a delight to see you here,” the voice that speaks is close to a clear foot above Patrick’s ear. He turns, eyes moving up to meet a rich, dark gaze that twinkles with merriment and rather too much wine. “Where the devil have you been hiding?”

“William!” he replies, with far more friendliness than he feels. He wonders for a moment if he _is_ still William or if he’s inherited a title from some errant uncle or distant cousin yet. Little matter. He was William at Eton and William he shall remain, formality for a man that’s fucked him senseless behind the school chapel seems rather laughably misplaced. “How are you, my good man?”

William cuts a rather dashing figure in his royal blue dress coat, shining bright with gold-hued buttons and medals that gleam on his chest. Patrick heard rumours that William joined the Navy after school, a fine career choice for a second son.

“Very well, very well,” William strokes a hand over his thin moustache. He’s still a handsome bugger in his naval blues, that much Patrick can’t deny, even if he is an utter zounderkite. They waste minutes on formal small talk and enquiries about old school friends that neither care for, all for the sake of social nicety before William gets to the crux of the issue. “Well, dear boy, is it true? Are you really to wed the Asher girl?”

“So my father informs me,” Patrick grimaces at his brandy, still a little sore from her outright rejection though he knows it’s ridiculous.

“Marvellous thing, marriage,” William observes absently, eyes drifting to a raven-haired beauty with her set across the dancefloor. Patrick has always found it utterly ridiculous that one must not dance with one’s own spouse at these tedious events. He could rather imagine laughing with Pete at the pretentious lords and ladies ranged around the room to be the only bright spot in an otherwise insufferable evening. Marriage will never cease to baffle him. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it immensely.”

Patrick blinks at him, unsure if it’s the unwise decision to combine champagne with brandy, his vanity driving him to leave his spectacles back at his own townhouse or an unfortunate combination of the two that lends a surreal blur to everything. He clears his throat and shifts his weight from one foot to the other, catching the eye of Lady Victoria from across so much polished marble. She scowls. He drinks more ill-advised brandy.

“I’m…” he trails off for a moment as William raises an eyebrow in interest. “I’m not sure I’m quite the husband she had in mind.”

“Why, Worcester, you look quite unwell,” William’s eyes widen with concern. Patrick is in rapt agreement — any moment now he’s going to swoon and faint like a, well, like a debutante with her corset too tight. Except _his_ debutante looks as though she would eat him alive before she swooned. “Come along outside, let’s get some fresh air in your lungs. It’s ridiculously stuffy in here, I ask you, who holds a ball in _London_ in _July_ , such a bad do, really rather frightful…”

Patrick allows William’s clucking to do little more than fade to a low background hum that bounces around his skull like skittish dragonflies. He stumbles down the sweeping staircase and out through the rear doors onto a terrace ranged above the most beautiful Oriental garden he’s ever seen whereupon he promptly empties the contents of his stomach into an azalea.

William pats him on the back and clucks his tongue while Patrick heaves up the questionable volume of alcohol abusing his system. When he’s done, he’s propelled to a bench, barely resisting the urge to tug at his neckcloth and collar and afford himself a small amount of breathing room as William sits in quiet contemplation, eyes roving over the beautiful pergola above their heads, the air laced with the perfume of lilies.

“Quite the to do,” William observes softly, eyes far more knowing than Patrick ever supposed they could be. “Care to talk about it, old chum?”

“Men like us,” Patrick begins quietly, faltering for a moment as he gathers the tattered edges of his thoughts. “We’re not for marriage, are we?”

“Men like…” William’s brow draws low, lips pursed as he thinks it through. His eyes widen and he shakes his head. “Oh. You mean — what we did at school was… You’re not…”

“No,” Patrick agrees amicably, going to considerable lengths not to grab William by the lapels and demand to know if he is the only one that seems unable to switch his desires between the sexes. “I’m not.”

“Ah.” William says no more, just smiles sadly at the carefully cultivated pond a little further along the path.

The silence rings between them and Patrick begins to wish he’d fetched another drink outside, if for no other reason than for something to do with his hands. He glances up and looks for stars but finds none here in smoke of the city. He wonders if perhaps there’s an omen there, some threatening spectre set to chase him back to the clear skies of the countryside, to the smell of the fields and the lengthy summer nights wrapped in the lavender light of seemingly endless twilight bleeding to dawn and the musk of Pete’s skin.

“This shall be the end of me,” he predicts eventually, knuckles glowing bone-bold through his skin as he flexes his hands against the bench. William chuckles softly. “Don’t make light of it, you utter bastard.”

“Something will always be the end of us,” William shrugs philosophically. “Why, there’s a plant in this very garden that, if you sat beneath it for five minutes, would kill you outright.”

“Do you suppose it’s really that simple?” Patrick asks, rising to his feet and, hands tucked behind his back, he considers the house rising up behind them. William is a revelation, not at all the silly boy of their school days but a man — a _married_ man — wise and sage. “That it’s as straightforward as merely… accepting the inevitable.”

“You may kick against the tide, Patrick,” William mutters softly, the roll of his name from the tip of a tongue he’s felt on every inch of his body at once unfamiliar and also reassuringly comforting. “But the waves are bigger than you or I. Better by far to let it move you where it will, let the current stop and then take stock and decide your best course.”

“Always a seaman,” Patrick chuckles, hand brushed to the insignia at William’s shoulder. “What the devil are you anyway? Lieutenant?”

“Nothing so grand,” William’s laugh is soft and melodious. “Ship’s surgeon.”

“Ship’s sur — _bloody hell,”_ Patrick gapes and reminds himself sharply to close his mouth, that is isn’t polite to boggle at someone like a dead bloody fish. But still. _Surgeon._ From the boy that failed to grasp even the most basic of biological principles. Patrick wonders, with cruel lack of charity, if this is something that William signed up for or if he merely dipped his hand in ink and provided a palm print. “Bloody well done, old boy.”

“Well, it’s rather a trifling matter,” William waves an airy and dismissive hand. “I hack things off or nail them back together. I’m more carpenter than physician.”

“My Lord?” Hurley rounds the corner before the conversation can develop further and Patrick feels the drop of his stomach, the lurch and tilt of a mistimed jump on his horse, the ground simultaneously falling away and rushing up to greet him as he swallows the burn of bile. “They’re searching for you.”

“Of course,” Patrick moves to follow, leaning into the squeeze William bestows to his shoulder for just a moment. He pauses before he leaves the pergola, head cocked in question. “Which plant?”

“Worcester?”

“Which plant would kill me?” he clarifies as William’s grin brightens with boyish mischief. “If I sat beneath it?”

William laughs, a teasing melody of a chuckle as he raises his glass to Patrick in solidarity: “The water lily.”

Patrick laughs for precisely as long as it takes to cross the threshold to the house. He makes his way back up the staircase rather more slowly — but far more _steadily_ — than he made his way down it. The walls seems closer than they did, the ceiling feels as though it’s descending to crush the very air from the heated press of his lungs as he follows Hurley back to the ballroom with the kind of obedience his father would find admirable.

They are waiting, gathered by the band in a small, accusatory gaggle; his father, Lord Dartmouth and dear Lady Victoria. Their expressions range from a desperate, unspoken plea that he _just be nice_ , to salivating greed to open hostility. His shoes drag reluctantly against the dancefloor as he wonders if he has enough time to fetch a drink. The Master of Ceremonies is already in position, commanding attention from the revellers in their fine linens and silks and Patrick wonders — absent and hopeless — what Pete is doing right at this very second.

“... delighted to announce…”

He takes half a wavering step forward at the furious urging of his father’s glare, crossing the click-clack of buffered marble with an ache in his chest.

“... the Marquess of Worcester and Lady Victoria Asher…”

He takes his place dutifully next to Lord Dartmouth, arranges his face into a smile he hopes is not _too_ rictus and tries to gaze adoringly at his fiancée. She merely glares at him and he aches for Pete’s smile with a hollow throb about his chest, lost to loneliness in the crowd of polite applause.

“... engaged to be married.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interestingly, Victorian England wasn't actually hugely hung up on homosexuality. Oh, sure, it was illegal but most of the arrests and convictions were for rapists and child molesters or else people that decided to do the do out in public. It wasn't until the early part of the 20th century that society, in the UK at least, really ramped up policing private lives. 
> 
> It's always great to bring William Beckett out for an airing, pleased to have him along. 
> 
> Comments or kudos would be AMAZING and you can find me [here over on Tumblr.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sn1tchesandtalkers)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick prepares for marriage.
> 
> It's, uh, not going as well as he hoped...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back on this lovely, sunny Friday!
> 
> More fabulous art by [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) be sure to go and check out the rest of her art [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/) Let's play a fun game - is that a bare ass or breeches? You can decide!

A decade of summers past, warm breezes and blossom scents wound with skin glowing sweat-damp and sheets that stood testament to devotion of the flesh. Ten years of endless nights fuelled by heated touches and lips painted lust-dark with longing, swollen with sin and whispered promises. A seemingly infinite number of mornings and evenings and all that fell outwith to simply _be._

For what?

To whom can Pete declare his love when there are none that seek to listen? Their moments have been reduced, have been balanced and weighed and measured and found lacking for no other reason than what lingers between their legs. Their time together contracts into mere days that Pete can count on his fingers, in nights fraught with worry of what comes next. Patrick murmurs reassurance almost in his sleep, so well-rehearsed are the lines. He whispers promised sweetness into the damp pocket that lingers between rose-blush lips and Pete’s salt-slick throat. Punctuation is delivered in kisses bitten with fevered desperation until Pete is bruised with Patrick’s love. It still feels like a goodbye rather than a vow.

Patrick shifts above him, head raised from where he lies draped across Pete’s chest, eyes heavy as he smiles, slow and lazy. “A penny for your thoughts, my love?”

“I’m afraid they’re not worth nearly so much,” Pete smiles, hollow-hung and spectred with uncertainty. He cards his fingers through Patrick’s hair and attempts — with little success — to draw him down for a kiss. “You won’t kiss me?”

“You’re not yourself.” Patrick raises an eyebrow and Pete wonders if it’s a reply or a diversion as he touches pale fingertips to the curve of Pete’s lower lip. He tastes salted-bitter with Pete’s come that lingers, caught in the whorls of his fingerprints like it may bleed into him, be absorbed and redistributed so that he’s forever marked as Pete’s.

They're stuck together, fused with sweat, come and spit that leaves each inch of skin sticky-sweet and bonded. It stings a little as Patrick braces up, as the breadth of their chests separate with the pull of sensitised skin. Pete grumbles his objection into the pillow, head turned so he doesn’t have to meet Patrick’s eyes. Of course, Lord Worcester is a stubborn shit who moves with the motion, rolling to Pete’s side with a worried frown and lips pursed in confused concentration.

“Please,” he whispers, a screaming accusation dressed in hushed hum gentleness. “Tell me.”

“It’s just…” Pete trails off.

It’s just…

It’s just that they have a week until Patrick is married, until all that they are accustomed to must shift and change. The very foundations of their relationship that seemed so straightforward in the carefree folly of youth now threaten to shake to so much dust and leave them standing, torn apart and bleeding. Patrick doesn’t move, breath held and hushed in a bitten lip and eyes that plead for something — acceptance or forgiveness or something else entirely — that Pete is ill-equipped to provide.

“You’re worried,” Patrick murmurs into the abyss of the pause, lips finding the furrowed line of Pete’s brow. “About the — about what’s to come?”

“You’re _not_?” Pete blinks and twines the length of Patrick’s fingers with his own. Patrick has the most exquisite hands, he’s thought so for so many years. His stomach feels oddly hollow at the thought of them touching someone else. “You’ll be at Roseworth House,” he hates the way his voice cracks at the thought of Patrick being ten miles away, “and I’ll be — ”

“At my side,” Patrick interjects, the pad of his thumb rolling gently against the signet ring on Pete’s finger. “I’ve already told father, I need a man who knows his horses. Oh, he knows the real reason but now that he’s so close to marrying me off, he won’t object.”

“Can’t we leave?” Pete sighs, though he knows the answer. “We could run away together, take a ship to the continent.”

“And how shall we live, dear boy?” Patrick’s smile is sweet with indulgence.

“You’ll play the violin,” Pete nods decisively, imagining it for a moment, some tiny apartment in Rome or Venice. “And I’ll paint or write poetry, it’ll be terribly romantic.”

“No,” Patrick laughs but not unkindly. “We shall be terribly _hungry._ If I may quote Shakespeare — ”

“Oh, good Lord, _must_ you?”

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,” Patrick murmurs, fingers tracing the pebbled edge of Pete’s nipple. “But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

Silence falls between them once more as they shift, as their legs tangle together like the untamed twist of wild roses. Pete wonders if they can be the same as the flowers — if they can flourish without assistance, without guidance or care. He hopes so and yet so little is borne from mere hope. Perhaps, without the duty of Patrick’s privilege, or the servitude of his own station, if one had been more like the other.

_Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps._

Life is not built on the _maybe_ but the _is_ , not the _could_ but the _must_ and Patrick’s marriage is no exception without room for reason and certainly without charity for _perhaps._ He sighs and curls closer, nose tucked to the hollow of Patrick’s throat, lost in the scent of him. The breeze through the open window has the faintest hint of autumn cool in late September. The newlyweds will move to spend the season in London within a few months and Pete wonders, heart aching with anticipation of forced absence, if Patrick will find a suitable excuse for Pete to join them.

“Do you know,” Pete whispers softly, Patrick’s breath hitching as he jolts from almost sleep and slides a protective hand to cup the curve of Pete’s arse. Patrick hums questioningly and waits for him to continue. “I don’t believe I’ve ever spent the night in your bed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Patrick’s objection is framed with a yawn. He seems to ponder for a moment, brows drawn low as he casts his mind back. “Surely you must have…”

“Never,” Pete’s lips curve, though he would be hard-pressed to call it a smile.

“It’ll be different,” Patrick promises, fingers curling around Pete’s soft cock, as though he can erase hurt with touch. Pete supposes, as his prick stirs, that he probably can. “Once we’re at Roseworth Hall, without father rolling his eyes and making things _difficult_ … It’ll be different, my love, I promise you.”

“Different is not necessarily better,” Pete points out, as Patrick tosses back the sheets and slides down between his legs.  Patrick smiles up at him in the pause between a kiss nipped to his hip and the touch of warm lips to the head of his cock.

“Different is not necessarily _worse_.”

~*~

The carriage ride from Badminton House to Roseworth Hall has been little more than a study of awkward silence. Patrick is beginning to consider throwing himself beneath the wheels as they pass the endless patchwork of harvest-ready fields rolling away to the horizon. He tried to comment on them to start, to explain which belonged to other local landowners and which were Stumph lands but his fiancée made it eminently clear that she had no such desire to learn. So, he’s fallen obediently silent and developed an interest in polishing his spectacles so thoroughly he’s sure he’s on the verge of wearing a hole in the lenses.

He sits opposite Lady Victoria and her dear friend Lady Lindsey — nominated as chaperone for their visit to the house that will become their marital home — as they whisper together and act as though he isn’t present at all. Until he does something as thoroughly intolerable as stretch his legs, or clear his throat, or breathe too loudly at which point he roasts beneath the molten glare of two women that clearly dislike him immensely. In honesty, if it were not for the thought of Pete driving the carriage and the possibility that they might slip away to _inspect the stables_ then he may have demanded the carriage be turned around several miles ago.

“So, Lady Lindsey,” he begins gamely — he is perfectly erudite and quite capable of befriending both women if he tries hard enough, he’s sure of it. “Tell me about your husband.”

“He’s dead,” she snaps back curtly. He promptly wonders if he can hang himself from the roof of the carriage, such is the acute heat of his embarrassment. “Killed in the Punjab, like so many imperialistic men before him, and no doubt many that will follow. Tell me, my Lord, what is it about foreign countries that rich white men find so impossible to resist?”

“Ah,” he stammers awkwardly. “I see. I’m _dreadfully_ sorry…”

He trails off when it becomes apparent that no one is listening to him. He should have fetched a book.

In truth, he has been bumbling from disaster to disaster since the Asher family descended upon Badminton House five days previously in preparation for the wedding at the end of the week. He considers himself a charming man — quite an eligible catch — but his finest display of dashing vivaciousness and sparkling wit have been greeted with little more than dour raised eyebrows. Really, Pete’s proposal that they run away together seems more and more tempting with each passing day.

Still, his mother’s suggestion that they visit the manor that comes with his title, the house he hasn’t seen since boyhood, seemed an excellent one. If for no other reason than he presumed it may separate Victoria from the ever-present Lindsey. No fear of that happening, apparently.

The house is well-tended and staffed, though Victoria barely glances up as they sweep along the driveway to the imposing front door. Pete graces him with a smile painted with sympathy as he alights from the carriage, his hat tipped to the ladies as they follow along behind like ducklings. Patrick wonders if perhaps he ought to offer Victoria his arm but it seems she has already taken Lindsey’s who offers him a glare so fierce that he contents himself with merely handing his hat and gloves to Hurley and making his way inside.

Victoria shows little interest in the ballroom — small, anything but intimate gatherings will need to be held outside — nor the intricate and delicate sconcing in the formal dining room, or the beautiful grand piano in the music room. With Lady Lindsey in rapt attendance, he leads the way up the staircase to investigate the chambers above when he hears it, a startled gasp that falls from Victoria’s lips as she gropes to squeeze Lindsey’s hand in excitement.

“The light!” she exclaims as she hurries along the gallery, arms flung wide as she gestures wildly. “This is north-facing, yes?” It’s the first question she’s addressed to him directly since he met her so he nods eagerly although in honesty he has no idea whatsoever. “It’s exquisite! It will be simply marvellous for painting! Oh, and for writing and…”

She trails off, clearly embarrassed at her outburst but he rushes to fill the chasm lest they lapse into awkward silence once more, “You paint? And write? You must show me some of your work… I mean… if you would like to, of course. It wasn’t a _demand_ …”

She smiles at him, a fleeting curve of her lips as she moves to the wall, fingers trailing lightly over the frame of one of his mother’s favourites.

“This is an Anderson,” she murmurs quietly as he moves to join her, making sure to keep a proper distance between them. “No Walk Today.”

“That’s right,” he inclines his head a little to admire it, “Mother says it reminds her of me, when I was a boy. My father prefers a Wootton or perhaps a nice cavalry charge, the form doesn’t really matter to him so much as the ideal. A fine man on a fine beast doing fine things for the glory of the Empire.”

“You disagree?” she asks with a face too neutral to be entirely natural.

“How best to phrase it,” he pauses for a moment to bite his lip before continuing softly, “I am quite the opposite of the son my father no doubt imagined for himself. And he’s really frightfully good about it.”

“And what if you should have a son?” she prompts.

“If _we_ should have a son,” he corrects lazily, eyes drifting to the window. “I shall give not a jot about how he _should_ behave so long as he’s happy,” he pauses for a moment before continuing hurriedly, “Though of course, I’d be rather more pleased if that happiness wasn’t sought in, say, arson. Or as an international jewel thief. Or a Tory.”

She laughs so sweetly he can’t help but smile, head ducked and a blush staining his cheeks quite the silliest shade of crimson.

“And if we should have a daughter?” she asks, voice darkening somewhat as he shrugs helplessly, the moment of amicable budding friendship broken as Lady Lindsey links their arms once more. “What then?”

“Then I should wish only the same for her,” he murmurs eventually, caught in the abstract of imagining the life of a child he creates. Will they have his eyes? Her hair? Will they despise him for all he is and all he cannot be? Oh, it’s thoroughly hopeless.

As the two of them make their way down the gallery to admire her chamber, he descends the stairs, apparently just in time for the arrival of her father’s carriage at the front door. If Lord Dartmouth is pleased to discover that Patrick isn’t ruining his daughter’s good name, he has rather a sour-faced way of showing it as he follows him into the drawing room. The clock is barely past noon but Patrick will not be deterred from the whisky bottle.

He has no idea, truly, why the Ashers have taken against him quite so fiercely. He has been nothing less than perfectly charming, a gushing and effusive host, no glass has run dry and no plate has been left unfilled. He has hosted card games and drinks receptions in the name of his father-in-law-to-be and gone on endlessly tedious shooting parties. Little matter that he ensures he misses each time or insists that Napper is a marvellous gun dog (he is quite the opposite of a marvellous gun dog, in fact it’s rather a wonder that the gamekeeper hasn’t shot him yet). He’s been gracious and polite and displayed nothing but his best side for five gruelling days and yet, somehow, it still isn’t enough.

The small talk is agonising, made worse by the arrival of his own father after half an hour and Patrick begins to wonder if anyone else intends to make an appearance. Lady Victoria is apparently happily ensconced in her new chamber with the ever-present Lady Lindsey, presumably discussing the many ways he disappoints her. Or perhaps picking out bed linens. Goodness knows, really. Patrick wonders if their entire married life will be spent as a threesome. He rather hopes not.

“I do hope that you can put an end to this silliness of hers once you’re wed,” Dartmouth begins, nose flushed with the whisky. “Women’s suffrage? I ask you, Worcester, in what way does a woman suffer? A husband to provide for her, a house to keep, what more could she wish for?”

“Quite,” Patrick nods earnestly as dislike unfurls in his gut. Should he have the pleasure of raising a daughter he makes an immediate resolution that he’ll make it his business to ensure she doesn’t marry a clod like her grandfather. “How dare they conspire to raise themselves as equals to the privilege we hold based purely on the cock and balls between our legs. Thoroughly inconceivable!”

Dartmouth nearly chokes on his whisky and minutes are lost to Patrick’s father patting him briskly on the back and glaring murderously at his son and heir. Patrick merely smiles back blandly whilst keeping his childish laughter internal. He fears he may weep with happiness when a footman appears at the door, Pete lurking uncomfortably in the hallway behind him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the footman bows. “Lewis said it was most urgent that he speak with you immediately.”

Pete grins, bright and bold and brilliant, teeth shining white and just a little too large for the rest of him. He bows as Patrick approaches, his wink disguised in the dip of his head and offers words in the language only they understand. "Mit Verlaub, mir scheint es gelüstet Euer Königliche Hoheit nach einem pläsirlicheren Zeitvertreib?"

Oh, but Patrick’s German is never quite what it could be – though he could probably still play endless games of soldiers, calling out cavalry orders with perfect grammar if he put his mind to it – but he understands enough. He can pick out the words so painfully close to _lust_ and _pleasure_ that they cannot possibly be accidental as Pete straightens with a smirk.

"Stall,” he instructs, barely able to restrain himself from cupping the curve of Pete’s cheek. “Bring die Reitgerte..."

Lord Dartmouth eyes him with interest as Pete strides back towards the servant’s door and Patrick turns to the impromptu drinks party with a half-formed excuse already on the tip of his tongue.

“Aren’t you full of surprises, Worcester my boy,” Dartmouth says around a mouthful of one of the best single malts Patrick has had the fortune to taste. “I didn’t know you spoke Dutch.”

“I don’t,” Patrick shrugs, excuse already forgotten as he sets his glass down and hurries towards the door, studiously avoiding his father’s glare burning between his shoulder blades. “It’s _Deutsch_. And I’m really rather awful at it. If you’ll excuse me, there’s an urgent matter come up that requires my immediate attention…”

He makes his way through the house and around to the deserted stable yard that, given time, he and Pete will fill with the very best horses. He smiles to himself as he searches the empty stalls, pausing at the loose box tucked in a corner where Pete stands, lounging back against the bare bricks with his breeches unbuttoned, his hard cock flushed dark and wanting and caught in the grasp of his palm. His smile is pure debauchery, tinged bright with challenge in those amber eyes.

“Why, Patrick,” he strokes himself slowly, fingers playing along the satin smoothness of his shaft as he quirks an eyebrow. “How good of you to come so quickly…”

The innuendo is not lost on Patrick. As though implications and subtleties are required. He searches the empty echelons of his mind for some witty response, for something sparkling and clever that lingers — caught and twisted — at the back of his tongue.

“Fuck,” Patrick whispers, struggling out of his jacket as he stumbles across the cobbles to fall to his knees in worship. Five days. He’s waited _five days_ for this. “You’re — you’re so beautiful…”

As he licks each line of jet dark ink between Pete’s hipbones, Patrick smiles to himself. Indeed an urgent something has arisen that requires his immediate attention.

No one but Pete needs to know that the matter that’s risen is his cock.

~*~

There is something of a melancholy echo through the years as Pete steps into the galley of the stable block, flickering lamplight painting streaks of gold across the cobbles. Patrick leans against a door, arms crossed and one leg slung over the other as he props himself casually with a shoulder to the wood, eyebrow raised and lips tucked into a smile. Pete recalls a boy that did that same, drunk on his father’s brandy and half-mad with lust. Another Patrick that faced another Pete – younger, more carefree and fired with possibilities – two fools unwilling to acknowledge their fate.

Tomorrow, Pete will have the stable lads hitch the finest pair in the yard in freshly oiled tack to a scrubbed clean carriage. He’ll dress in his best breeches and formal coat, mount the box and drive Patrick to St Michael’s church in the village. When Patrick emerges – handsome and smiling in his morning suit – he will be a married man. No longer Pete’s, though he swears nothing will change, no longer free to fill their nights with unhurried touch and lingering lips on heated skin.

“It’s late,” he observes, because he has nothing better to say. “You should be in bed, tomorrow is… rather an important day.”

“Not for me,” Patrick shrugs and straightens, hands fumbling awkwardly over one another as he tries to find something to do with them. Pete can think of many things he would like Patrick to do with them but none are appropriate for married men. “Besides, I couldn’t sleep without you there. I’m afraid I’ve grown rather too accustomed to you, it’s the most dreadful bore, I know.”

“Tomorrow you’ll lay with your bride,” Pete wishes it didn’t sting quite so much, the thought of her in Patrick’s arms. That the image of Patrick inside of her didn’t turn his stomach inside out. “Are you looking forward to it?”

Patrick doesn’t answer for a long moment, eyes closed and head tilted against the door as he breathes deeply, the rise and fall of his ribs beneath his shirt entirely captivating. Pete has spent many a night in the coach house, tangled on sheets that smell of _them_ , simply watching Patrick breathe. He’s watched the rhythmic tick of his heartbeat beneath the stretch of skin and ribs and wondered if it’s possible to die from loving someone too much.

The answer is, undoubtedly, no but it still aches like it might be.

When Patrick marries, he knows it’ll make little difference to his day to day life. If Patrick moves to Roseworth Hall and Pete remains at Badminton House, logic dictates that sooner or later one will forget about the other. But it doesn’t numb the ache in his chest or the salt-bright sting of tears that threaten to brim and fall each time he thinks of it.

 

“Do you honestly think I’m looking forward to it?” he asks with quiet dignity. “To any of this? If I had _any_ choice at all in the matter, I swear I — ”

“Patrick,” Pete begins softly, although he wants to say _sir_ , to force the distance between them himself before someone else can do it for him. It throbs down into his bones, the unjust unfairness of it all, the ridiculous sense of social standing that means they can never be acknowledged. Is love truly so blinkered?

It’s impossible for him to continue as Patrick steps closer, as he closes the distance between them until they’re thrown into one another’s orbit, hauled closer like moon-drawn tides and they’re pressed flush. Lips slick to his, damp and sweet with madeira and crystallised fruits, rich with the taste of Patrick that knocks him half-dizzy with desire. Hands fist in his shirt, twisted like ravening knives into the cotton as he knots the fingers of one hand at the nape of Patrick’s neck, holding him close but never quite close enough.

“The coach house?” he asks, eager for this, for what could be the final stolen moments of salt-mist skin and whispered promises neither can keep.

“No,” Patrick shakes his head and for a moment Pete’s heart sinks a little. Patrick wants the hay loft, wants the lash of the whip against him and the sink of nails into butter-smooth skin.

“Of course,” Pete murmurs, cursed heart protesting with each bitter syllable as he nods with a slashed-wound smile to the stairs. “Go ahead, I’ll follow you up.”

“Not quite, my love,” Patrick smiles, shot sweet with tender desires as he strokes a hand through the coarse pull of Pete’s hair. “I thought it might be rather nice if you accompanied me to _my_ chamber tonight.”

“Your chamber?” Pete repeats as Patrick nods, the plush press of his lower lip bitten flushed and pink. “In the house?”

“That’s the only chamber I have, yes,” he grins, spark-bright and shining like moonlight as his fingers stroke the small of Pete’s back. “Well?”

Pete falters, the pulse of his insatiable, ravening heart the thunder of cavalry hooves within his chest. Patrick’s eyes glow grey to blue and ringed with wedding band gold as he blinks sweet sincerity up at Pete from beneath the frame of honeyed lashes and waits for a response. For a moment, Pete imagines he might refuse, that he simply turns on his heel and walks away to the life he knows he could have. The life of family and marriage and his mother with grandchildren on her knee. Pete imagines and wonders with hopeless desperation if that might be enough, if his ardour would cool and his wants would drift to another – someone that isn’t Patrick.

Patrick touches his cheek, fingers warm, smooth and elegant and Pete’s heartbeat crashes higher still, a messy throb that bruises his ribs from the inside. If there was a moment, a fleeting whisper of time that passed by in which he could have steeled himself to walk away then it races away at a gallop with the touch of skin to skin. If there was the possibility that he might even begin to imagine himself strong enough to resist then it falls to the ground in defeat as Patrick smiles at him. Each kiss, each touch and whispered promise breathed over a decade of togetherness blows through him with the power of towering tides as he nods, stutter-stammered and unsure, tongue slicked to dry lips.

They don’t say a word as they leave the stables, lamps extinguished and boots ringing against cobbles that give way to the crunch of gravel. Patrick leads the way to the tradesman’s door, the squeak of it close to deafening as they slip into the cool quiet of the pantry. Patrick pauses, a glance tossed back over his shoulder as he presses his finger to the luscious swell of pouted lips. Pete wants to laugh as he wonders, with a touch of hysteria, why on earth Patrick might imagine he wishes to attract attention.

He has no chance to take heed of their surroundings, steps stolen on carpeted stairs and through a door towards the end of a hallway. Patrick’s chamber is dimly lit with the glow of the overhead light – modern paraffin, unlike Pete’s stuttering colza lamp – each detail taken in and considered. Patrick’s bed with its heavy drapes and fine linens, his bureau with his combs and brushes and hand mirror, his desk scattered carelessly with papers and his cases laid out and half-packed in preparation for his honeymoon tomorrow. The very essence of the man that Pete’s never been permitted to enjoy.

His back thumps to the mattress before he has time to ponder, warm hands working buttons and laces as Patrick murmurs sweet surrender into his ear, “I want you out of these damn clothes, my love, I want you — I want to — ” He pauses with a shake of his head. “No, my darling. Tell me, what do _you_ want?”

What does Pete want? He contemplates his answer as he yanks Patrick’s shirt open, buttons torn from the cotton if they fail to acquiesce fast enough. He works open Patrick’s trousers and slides his hand inside, catching the blood-gorged heat of his cock in the grasp of his fist. Patrick hisses, head tipped back and throat an elegant line marred only by the bob of his adam’s apple as he swallows frantically. Pete strokes slowly, fingers catching each inch of the lust-flushed length of it. He knows exactly what he wants.

“I want you to fuck me,” he murmurs as Patrick leans over him, as their lips brush bright with aching need. “I want you inside me.”

He needs it more than wants it. _Craves_ it; to be the last tight heat Patrick feels around his cock before his wedding night. The urge to believe that only _he_ can sate the desire that fires Patrick’s blood is all-consuming, overwhelming, endlessly and totally agonising.

“Well, what a marvellous coincidence,” Patrick whispers against his ear, promises dealt on heated breath and flushed lips. “That’s _precisely_ what I want, too…”

Kisses bite to his throat, lips latched to the spot beneath his ear that shivers him goosebumped with desire as Patrick’s fingers find his nipples and pinch with white-hot precision. Sensation crawls through him, nerve endings sparked like so much kindling as the luscious press of Patrick’s mouth moves ever lower. Patrick kisses him with reverence, as though Pete is the answer to each eternal question, the sum total of the decisions he’s made correctly delivered in lips grazed delicately to the precise projection of his hip bone. Patrick licks the burning heat of his desire into the delicate concave of Pete’s stomach as his fingers conduct a concerto of carnality along the jet-dusted gold of Pete’s thighs and he whispers a sigh of Patrick’s name like last words uttered before certain demise.

“Patrick,” Pete groans as Patrick bites a bruise of possession between two of his ribs, as though the word alone is all he needs. In moments like this, he supposes it probably is. Patrick licks over the crimson bloom of heat that scores somewhere between skin and bone, eyebrows raised as he meets Pete’s eyes. _“Patrick.”_

“You want more from me?” Patrick asks, arms slipped beneath Pete’s arse as he sprawls on his stomach between legs Pete spreads in desperate invitation. His breath is hot and trickles down over the twitching length of Pete’s aching prick to pool somewhere low in his groin. “What would you like me to do, Peter?”

“Your mouth,” Pete is close to incoherent as another warm gust coats his cock in heat. “Suck me…”

“Here?” Patrick asks with conversational pleasantness, head turned to suck a bright mark to Pete’s thigh that scorches his skin. Pete keens a whine and bucks his hips with a desperate shake of his head. “No? Perhaps here?” The next touch of his mouth is to the ink low on Pete’s stomach, the grinning curve of the skull seized in a kiss as Patrick sucks and swirls his tongue and Pete swears he could die from the way the tip of his cock grazes Patrick’s throat. “Not there either, dear boy? Goodness me, you’ll need to be specific…”

“I won’t beg, you arrogant little shit,” Pete insists through the grit of teeth clenched within the gleam of his smile as his thumb traces the curve of Patrick’s cheekbone. “I can promise you that.”

It’s a lie and they both know it, it’s there in the rise of Patrick’s eyebrows, the curl of his smirk as he traces the pad of his thumb the length of Pete’s cock. Pete chokes a moan into the soft flesh inside his cheek as his cock twitches. He scowls at Patrick’s grin glowing bright with the promise of impending triumph. His cock is a fucking traitorous turncoat.

“So, that’s to be the way of it?” Patrick murmurs, a kiss pressed to the crown of Pete’s prick. Fire-scorch heat blazes bright across his skin as Patrick withdraws — slow and easy — sticky-slick need glazing his lips. Pete draws a breath and closes his eyes for a moment, lets the bittersweet pain of impending separation shudder through him as he tangles a hand in the hair at Patrick’s nape, the other cupping his cheek as he tilts him up until their eyes meet.

“Do your very worst, Stumph,” he mutters, releasing him and stretching his hands up above his head, fingertips brushing the cool ridges of the ornately carved headboard. “I dare you.”

Patrick’s chuckle is muffled in the press of his lips to Pete’s tingling, sensitised skin, each brush of his mouth the most exquisite torture. Patrick knows his body better than Pete supposes he knows it himself. He’s intimately aware of each precise point that throbs blood to Pete’s cock and — by extension — knows how to come close-but-not-quite-enough to each one with maddening accuracy. He’s lazy and leisurely as he flirts delicate kisses the length of Pete’s thigh, hot breath preceding his hotter tongue as he trails meandering licks against the tight swell of his balls. It’s all Pete can do not to knot a hand in Patrick’s hair and force him down onto his prick.

Patrick brushes gentle kisses the length of Pete’s cock, eyes closed in ecstasy as he whimpers greedy moans into tumescent flesh. He ducks lower to graze his nose through the dark curls that frame the root of Pete’s prick, to draw his scent in like he can merge with it. Something nerve-bold and brilliant coils fist-like and sharp in the base of Pete’s spine as Patrick gently takes the swell of one of his balls into his mouth and begins to suck softly.

The pearl gathered glittering at the crown of Pete’s cock swells, beads thick and sticky and then, with another unbidden twitch, rolls slowly over the flush-flare head of him. Patrick catches it deftly, the fluttered pink of his tongue curling greedily to claim it entirely, his desperate groan ringing through Pete’s skull, his groin and his ill-fated, irredeemable heart.

The taste of Pete’s desire staining his tongue seems to be sufficient to urge Patrick along, to have him sucking sweetly on the leaking tip of Pete’s prick as he gazes up at Pete as though he controls the very passage of the sun and moon in the sky. Nails bite sharp points of perfectly executed pain into the jut of his hips, anchored points of blooming sensation that have him sinking his teeth into the swollen flush of his lower lip.

He must be lost, drifting somewhere not-quite-here as Patrick sinks his mouth beautifully lower, as he swallows the angry, dark length of Pete’s prick and frames it with the flushed-rose pout of his petal-plush lips. Had Pete forgotten how well Patrick knows him, how he knows each thrumming inch of burnt-raw skin on his body, he’s reminded sharply in the simplicity with which Patrick sets about taking him apart. It starts with the slow bob of his head up to the very crown of Pete’s cock then sliding back to nudge the wrap of his palm around the base, the rhythm sublime, the speed torturous as he thumbs along the swollen gorge of the thickened vein that pounds rich with blood and sensation along the underside.

Patrick smirks around a moan snuffled into the skin of Pete’s prick, gently easing back the hood and sliding the tip of his tongue along the slit. Pete cries out, a stifled burst of shuddered sound bitten off in the resolved clamp of his teeth into his tongue as Patrick quirks an eyebrow, knowing and taunting, “Oh go to hell, Stump…”

Needle-bright pinpricks of glittered gold speckle his vision as Patrick licks-sucks-tastes the length of his cock, groaning a litany of desire into the spit-slick musk of it. He thinks he sees Patrick rocking his hips, imagines with a whine the rub of Patrick’s blood-gorged prick against the sheets as he brings himself off against linen and silk. Fuck, but he loves that cock, the flushed hard weight of it in his hand, against his tongue, curved up and crushed between their bodies as Pete fucks into him —

“Fucking _hell,”_ he gasps as Patrick sucks him down greedily once more, mouth wrapped not only around his cock but the invasive press of Patrick’s thumb, coating skin warm and slick. He shouldn’t be surprised — and yet, hopelessly, somehow he still _is_ — when the crook of inquisitive fingertips brush with tantalising precision against his hole. “Oh fuck, God, Patrick…”

Patrick pulls off, Pete’s cock left cool with spit and shining in the lamplight, each muscle and bone and stretch of sinew pulled taut with anticipation as he shudders his impatience against the counterpane. He spreads his legs, knees drawn up and feet flat to mattress, hips arched upward as he pleads without speaking and begs without voice for all that Patrick can give him. Patrick merely smiles politely, for all the world as though they’re not separated by the sinuous stretch of Pete’s sweat-slick skin glowing copper and gold and the furious, flushed-dark curve of his cock.

With something akin to languor, Patrick draws the slippery pad of his spit-slick thumb around the rim of Pete’s hole. His chin is propped on his hand whilst he’s stretched out on his stomach and Pete pretends he isn’t affected by the sight of the plump roundness of Patrick’s arse, pale as cream, satin soft and begging for the drag of Pete’s tongue between his cheeks.

Pete is panting, dragging each breath into his lungs like liquid fire as he pinches resolve into his wrists above his head, his own nails sinking into soft skin until he feels it threaten to give and break. Patrick turns his head but not his eyes, lips nuzzling a soft kiss to Pete’s thigh with just a suggestion of teeth to sensitive skin as he carries on lightly stroking his thumb over Pete’s hole. Pete is drowning, kicking desperately and floundering for the tenuous hold on his self control that threatens to break and snap and plunge him headfirst to cry and plead and beg for more.

“Is something wrong?” Patrick asks, voice a husk of a whisper and punctuated with the delicate flutter of his tongue against Pete’s arse. Spine slammed straight then curved in a desperate arc, Pete dances between pushing for more and arching away, split somewhere in the too-much-not-enough of aching need as Patrick opens him up with grasping thumbs and begins to lick.

Each brush of his mouth is measured, each slide of his tongue and delicate kiss to fire-charged nerve endings is precise. He performs each action with the grace he displays on his horse, each motion executed as boldly and with as much perfection as a _passage_ or _piaffe._ He’s the very embodiment of precision, a portrait in self-control as he swirls his tongue in slow circles, catching each sensitive spot with a maddening hum of satisfaction. Pete aches, body poised somewhere between implosion and combustion as Patrick slowly, boldly and oh-so-fucking _flawlessly_ slips his thumb inside and finds that spot — that aching, throbbing, beating thrum that turns Pete inside out, that shreds him to explosions and screaming desperation.

Patrick rolls his thumb lazily, cheek pressed to Pete’s thigh as he grins up at him — wide and wicked — as though he has all the time in the world. Pete’s nails scrabble for purchase against the cool mahogany above him, scraping raw against the wood as Patrick purses his lips and blows a cool breath over the heated length of his cock. He can see the fluttered pulse of his heart beneath his ribs, can feel each messy throb echoed in his temples, his wrists and the persistent, beating thrum of his cock. It’s darker still now, raging thick and wanting between them and his fingers twitch compulsively with the need to touch, to stroke and relieve himself. Patrick hasn’t bound him, he could do so if he wishes, could tug at his prick until he streaks endless white across Patrick’s smug, self-satisfied face.

“Fuck!” he cries out, shock-sharp and scraping the back of his throat as Patrick moves to his knees, thumb twisted deliciously deeper as he shushes Pete with a low chuckle.

“You’ll wake the house,” Patrick murmurs as he gropes beneath the pillow for a jar of lotion, generously slicking between Pete’s cheeks. “Do you want them to come and see what the racket is? Find us like this?” Pete’s gaze slides to the rose-tipped flush of Patrick’s cock, curved proudly up towards his stomach as he sits back against his heels. Patrick follows the heat of his stare, laughs low and sweet, and grasps himself with his free hand, “Oh, is that what you want? Hmm?”

A finger joins his thumb, coaxed in alongside as Patrick begins to stroke himself with leisurely pulls of his fist, each one timed with the slide of his hand between Pete’s legs, fucking them both smoothly in time. Pete’s prick pounds with his pulse, twitches objections of not-quite-enough as Patrick stretches him open. He aches to be touched, to feel the wrap of Patrick’s hand around him, stroking him half mad as he ruts into him with that magnificent cock, as he groans his ecstasy into Pete’s ear and fills him with the liquid heat of possession. He needs, he wants, he must have…

“Please,” he whispers, barely a breath stolen between them as he twists against the sheets. Patrick attacks that spot within him, the pad of his thumb rubbing sharp and heated until Pete is burning with the need to cry out, to beg and plead for all that Patrick has and all that he might yet be able to offer.

“What?” Patrick prompts, thrusting into the grasp of his own fist, the blood-gorged length of his cock leaking pearl. Pete stings white-hot with the urge to taste. “Say that again, my darling.”

“ _Please_ , you utter fucking _bastard_ ,” Pete snarls through teeth clenched tight, throbbing hard with the thought of someone walking in on them, of someone seeing Patrick like this. Perhaps if they saw, perhaps if they _understood_... _Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps._ “I want your cock, immediately if not sooner. Just… _fuck me_.”

The fingers withdraw and Pete is empty, lost and longing as he hooks his thighs to Patrick’s hips, as he tries to draw him closer, to crush the flushed hard length of their cocks together. Patrick resists, still stroking himself slowly as he smiles down at Pete like the stars themselves may extinguish at any moment. He trails his fingers gently along the curve of Pete’s cheek, clung with the scent of cock and musk and rose-sweet lotion, and whispers softly, “I do love you, you know.”

“I know,” Pete responds with his own somber twist of a smile. “Now do us both a grace and favour and fuck me until,” he pauses and bites his lip before continuing with the faintest tremor to his voice, “just fuck me until I forget what’s to come.”

“Look at me,” Patrick demands, cock released and nails sinking into Pete’s thigh until he meets the ocean-bright depth of his gaze. He pretends, with a shadow of a smile, that it doesn’t hurt. “It _won’t_ change. _Nothing_ will change. I love you, do you hear me? I bloody _love_ you, you wonderful, maddening, _perfect_ fool.”

With that he slides forward, a pillow urged beneath Pete’s hips and a clumsy handful of lotion smoothed to his cock as he pushes the thick-flushed crown of it to the pucker between Pete’s cheeks. Patrick frowns down, brow creased in concentration as he slowlyslowly _slowly_ begins to ease inside, body shiver-shuddering as Pete bites his cries into the heel of his hand. He feels each inch, each gloriously burning, blood-bold inch as Patrick breaches him, the stuttered give of pain to pleasure as Patrick pants and groans and possesses Pete completely.

“You good boy,” Patrick murmurs as he seats himself entirely, as he lowers himself until they’re chest to chest and he’s cradled in the willing bracket of Pete’s thighs. _“My_ good boy…”

Pete groans and Patrick echoes it, foreheads touched and lips brushed as they change shape to fit one another. It’s been so long (too long?) since he gave himself like this to Patrick, since Patrick asked for it and took it (him?) and left him lost with needy devotion. He brushes kisses to the flutter of Patrick’s eyelids, curls a possessive hand into honey-blonde hair and shifts. Waits. Patrick coils, a spring to be sprung, muscle-taut and shivering with fever-heat sweat as he rolls his hips, shifts his weight and takes a breath.

He holds it. Eyes closed. Five throbs of Pete’s pulse. He breathes out.

And suddenly their bodies are a battlefield as Patrick braces to his knees and begins to thrust. Pete’s hands find the plush curve of his arse, nails biting need into the planes of it as they declare war on one another with thrusts met push for pull. Patrick marks his offence in the powerful roll of his hips and Pete parries his fire with the greed and grasp of lips sucking bruises to the column of Patrick’s milk-pale throat. They fuck and pull and tear at one another like it’s all they need to keep breathing, to keep living, to keep fighting for (with?) one another until their can be only one man left standing.

Patrick’s cock finds that spot — the frayed remnants of Pete’s self-control — in the split second his hand finds the pillared heat of Pete’s prick between their stomachs. Pete moans a lovesong as Patrick strokes, as he kisses and he fucks into Pete as though he’ll take no prisoners and feel no regrets. He’s an invader and Pete is willing and fit only for surrender as they slam together until the world shakes down around them. It’s measured in minutes — and embarrassingly few at that — before the _not enough_ twists into the _too much_ , before Pete shudders and clenches and explodes to dust and bone. He wonders (absently) if he might be left entirely dry and drained as he comes, hot and desperate and streaking them both with salt-stained ribbons of pearl.

He cries out in that moment of burnt-from-the-inside completeness, vision streaked and blurred in shades of green-blue-grey and glittered-bright-gold.

A hand grasps his chin, tips his head up and up until he meets Patrick’s eyes, sees the clench of his jaw and the flush of his lip caught between his teeth. He sees him tense through his shoulders and spine, feels him haul and breathe and hold as his hips stutter like his groan, a perfect moment of still-life made flesh as he thrusts one-two-three-and… He comes undone.

Pete holds him close as they tremble together, hands sliding to hair, to cheeks and lips and ribs and hips. They touch like last chances, like no regrets and nothing more to come as Pete wraps his legs around Patrick and begs without saying it for Patrick never to withdraw. He’s sweetly sore, aching deliciously and half-mad-hopeful that they can remain like this forever.

Perhaps, if he closes his eyes and presses his face to the damp hollow of Patrick’s throat, he’ll never need to move.

_Perhaps…_

~*~

_Don’t sleep._

He repeats it to himself in a mantra of silence, whispers it into Patrick’s ear like a litany each time his eyelids begin to droop. The bed is a mess of streaked sweat and come and grease-stained lotion seeped to the sheets. There’s something cool and damp beneath Pete’s thighs and he wonders without really caring too much whose release it marks. He’s aching sore, his back and hips flared with the threat of _just once more_.

He’s fucked Patrick raw, been fucked in return, sucked and licked and marked each inch of skin for his own. He’s fought off sleep with the curl of his fingers around a softened cock, coaxing life to it with the press of his lips or the slide of his tongue. Patrick is ghost-pale but smiling, shoulders scarred with the rake of Pete’s fingernails as he gasps against his pillow.

Beyond the window, the light is shifting to a rose-gold dawn that flirts beyond the curtains like first kisses. Patrick droops against him, murmurs a hissed objection as Pete pulls him close and reaches for the limp curve of his cock once more. Patrick shakes his head and mumbles a _can’t_ as Pete begs for a _yes._ They have mere hours now, nothing but minutes, no more days or nights to stretch between them, to be snatched away unfairly fast.

_Just once more._

Patrick pulls Pete in to rest against his chest. The flutter-thump of his heart beneath Pete’s cheek is a beat of reassurance as he cards his fingers through Pete’s sweat-damp curls.

“Sleep,” he instructs, slurred and thick-tongued as he hovers hazily at the edges himself. “Hurley will — Just a few minutes until he comes along and then…”

“Don’t sleep,” Pete begs, nails bitten to Patrick’s hip as he kisses him, deep and desperate as he moves to slide between Patrick’s legs, to take him into his mouth once more and stain his lips with the taste. “Please, don’t.”

“An hour,” Patrick mumbles, already nodding out of consciousness with eyes ringed bruise-dark to match the marks Pete has painted to his skin with teeth and lips and grasping hands. Let him explain them to his bride, let her wonder at the shadow of Pete’s mouth against her husband’s throat, the print of his teeth against his thighs. “Tonight, we have tonight…”

“We don’t,” Pete whispers with fierce determination as Patrick’s eyes close. “Please, just once more?”

“I can’t,” Patrick groans, untangling Pete’s fingers from around his cock. Pete’s own prick throbs and aches against his thigh, raw with the punishment he’s inflicted upon it. “Sleep, my dear, just for an hour or two.”

Pete gives in and lies still, let’s the steady rise of Patrick’s ribs soothe him slowly. He won’t sleep, not now the dawn has stolen the night from them, not now he knows the house will soon begin to wake around them. He wonders which chamber keeps Lady Victoria from her husband-to-be. He wonders if she will learn to love him as fiercely as Pete does.

He ghosts a kiss to the sweetened softness of Patrick’s parted lips, drinks the sigh he receives in response before stealing from the bed like a thief. He dresses quickly, all but his boots, his shirt unbuttoned and, with a final glance at Patrick sprawled across his sheets, he slips from the room.

Whereupon he almost collides with Hurley.

Hurley bites his yelp of shock into silence with valiant effort, eyes widening at the sight of Pete — face wet with tears he refused to shed in front of Patrick — grey and pale and half-undressed. It must be obvious, Pete knows that, the truth of where he’s been and what they’ve done caught vividly in the grasp of the door handle in his hand. The heir fucked to exhaustion by the stable master in the family house the night before his wedding. The scandal would be unbearable.

Hurley sighs, his hand light against Pete’s arm as he speaks softly, “Terrible affair,” he murmurs with tender understanding that shakes another sob through Pete’s shoulders. “Come along, down to the pantry. I’ll fetch you some tea and toast. Quickly now, before anyone sees you up here…”

Pete follows obediently, unsure in his hopeless, hesitant uncertainty, of what else he can do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we're 2/3 of the way through now, comments and kudos would be lovely.
> 
> Or, you can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers
> 
> Have an AMAZING weekend, guys!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Patrick adjusts to married life...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome back!
> 
> More fabulous art by [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) be sure to go and check out the rest of her art [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/) A little bit, uh, _cheeky_ this week... ;)
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155712566@N06/41270063805/in/dateposted/)  
> 

If Patrick presumed he would be bored throughout the ceremony, he could not have been more wrong. He stands beside his bride utterly rigid with panic, his snowy-white cravat cutting sharply into the bruise Pete bit to his throat, as the vicar pauses expectantly. He stammers briefly, realising with a jolt that his mind is horribly absent from his body and that he has no idea what is expected from him.

“I, Patrick…” Reverend Way prompts, eyebrows raised.

“I, Patrick,” he begins hesitantly, Victoria’s look of contempt enough to make him stutter once more before ploughing on with grim determination. “Take thee, Victoria, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and worship, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

Lady Lindsey stands to the left of Victoria, her glare enough to make him fear for his life as her lips twist into a grimace of disgust. He’s a _good_ man, he reminds himself, he can make a perfectly _charming_ husband. At least he’s not cruel or unkind. Although, privately he wonders; is it both cruel _and_ unkind to condemn the poor girl to a lifetime of his inadequate partnership? No time to worry about that now as she speaks her vows without emotion, her eyes drifting somewhere over his shoulder.

“I, Victoria, take thee, Patrick, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and obey,” she stiffens slightly at that and he can’t say he blames her, it’s a dreadful, old-fashioned turn of phrase and not one he intends to invoke. “Till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

He finds he can’t seem to stop trembling. Polite laughter ripples amongst the congregation — far more numerous than he anticipated — as he fumbles with the ring that William hands him and it clatters to the floor. They presume, no doubt, that it was done in keeping with tradition to shake out any latent bad luck that may linger. In reality, it is simply that his hands are shaking violently, too slicked with sweat to keep a tight grip.

“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship.” He’s lying. He won’t. He _can’t_ , oh God what the hell is he _doing_? He slides it into place, a matching band for the one secured like a gold-hued noose around his own finger. “And with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Her hand in his is the first physical contact they’ve had. It feels warm and soft in his grasp, delightfully feminine but hideously foreign when he craves the grate of Pete’s work-rough palm. The way she tenses, clearly itching to pull free, he supposes she’s not entirely happy with the situation either. He blinks at her, struggling to keep the panic from his face as the vicar booms, “You may now kiss the bride.”

Oh, God help him but he’d forgotten about this part although Victoria’s face suggests this may be the moment she’s dreaded the most. He leans in, a gentlemanly pause delivered and then he touches their lips together briefly. He can taste her revulsion, the way she moves to recoil back from him and for a moment he would very much like to inform her that he isn’t particularly enjoying it either. But instead he smiles as he pulls back, apologetic and contrite, flexing his hand a few times to accustom himself to the cut of the ring into his finger.

That’s it.

He’s married.

Simple as that.

Outside of the church, the gathered guests shower them with rice as they make their way down the path to where Pete waits in his top hat and frock coat, the white pair hitched to their finest carriage. Their eyes meet briefly, a flash of amber agony that cuts through Patrick blade-bright and burning.

“Congratulations,” he murmurs to Victoria as he assists her into the carriage, his gaze flicking back to Patrick as he continues, his voice laden heavy with implication, “My Lady.”

He climbs into the carriage beside her — a chaperone no longer required, though Patrick will admit that he would much prefer even the Lady Lindsey as opposed to the frigid silence — husband and wife alone together for the first time as the door clicks closed behind them. He doesn’t take her hand. She seems relieved.

“So,” he begins awkwardly, as the carriage rolls back towards Badminton House. “Are you — ”

“Please,” she whispers, a delicate thread of sound drawn too tight, shimmered close to breaking point between them. He thinks he sees something damp at her cheek but she sweeps it away like a sleight of hand. “Please, I would so much prefer it if… If we didn’t talk right now.”

Patrick finds he has no objection to that suggestion whatsoever.

~*~

Silence has never been something to be feared, that much Patrick has always believed. He’s spent afternoons in the library at Badminton House with nothing but the rain against the windowpanes and the whispered hush of turning pages as a score to his own company. He’s laid on Pete’s bed, content to merely listen to the rise and fall of his breathing for hours at a time. He’s happy with nothing but the thud of hooves beneath him, the snort of equine breath and summer breeze through leaves.

In short, Patrick is not a man who craves constant human interaction.

However, he’s never before found himself subject to a complete and encompassing lack of conversation. It’s peculiar, he supposes, not because he wishes to engage with his new bride in any particularly meaningful way, but rather because he feels his own reticence reflected back at him so utterly. He wonders, with an absent kind of hysteria, if perhaps this might have been easier had she been an eager wife, enthusiastic and hopeful for his attention. Instead, she looks as though she’s deciding which may be the most convenient implement laid out in front of her to disembowel him at any moment. He finds it rather disconcerting that she seems to be struggling between her soup spoon and salad fork and he wonders if he ought to direct her to the meat knife to make it easier on both of them.

Still, he supposes, at least she refused his suggestion that they honeymoon in Rome, preferring a shorter trip to Brighton. It did make it rather more convincing to have Pete join them as their coachman, no eyebrows raised (aside from his father’s) by his assertion that he doesn’t trust hired drivers and has no intention of using hansom cabs. For the safety of his bride, of course. His father-in-law had nodded most approvingly at that and immediately suggested they stay in the family townhouse.

“My dear,” he begins softly, the name that should be reserved only for Pete tripping uneasily from his tongue. She glances at him with resigned sadness. “How’s your soup?”

“Quite satisfactory,” she informs him as though neither of them can see she’s done nothing more than push it around the bowl. The dining room is eerily quiet as they both fall silent once more, nothing but the clink of silverware to china and the ominous ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

Perhaps staying at the townhouse wasn’t the wisest choice. At least a hotel would be brimmed with hustle and bustle and the chatter and laughter of other diners. But the house has the distinct advantage of Pete in the rooms below — a bedroom to himself as there are no other stable lads — and the possibility for private retreat to the music room now and again.

They continue their meal in strained silence broken by his occasional attempts to engage her in polite conversation and her skilful determination to rebuff each one. His private wish that perhaps they could be friends if nothing else is fading by the minute. With the cheeseboard untouched between them and his fourth cup of rapidly cooling, bitter coffee resting on the table in rapt judgement, he steels himself for the inevitable.

“Well, my dear,” the maid removes his cup from in front of him as Victoria glances at him, quiet and cornered. “Shall we retire to bed?”

“If you wish,” she murmurs.

There’s a cold sense of dread in his stomach as he climbs the stairs to his chamber. He reminds himself that Lady Victoria truly is lovely; a beautiful girl with a love for art and poetry. Any man in Brighton would be proud to call her his wife and yet… and yet he can’t summon the desire he knows he ought to feel.

Hurley has drawn his bath, the water steaming hot and scented with lavender as he sinks into it, grateful for the delay if nothing else. Panic blooms bright and bold in his chest as he glances down at the bruised-raw mess of his body, the crimson glow of fingertips, teeth and greedy lips. Bugger it all (or bugger _him_ ) he shouldn’t have allowed Pete to be quite so possessive, to paint him aggressive shades of jealousy with bruising, biting brushstrokes of desire. There’s no chance the marks will go unseen, although maybe he can insist on the lights being dimmed, the drapes drawn around the bed and —

“My lord?” Hurley taps on the bathroom door, knuckles muffled by his gloves. “May I come in? I have your towel…” he trails off as he enters and flicks an accusatory glance at the many bruises littering Patrick’s chest, “Ah, I see.”

“What on earth do I do?” Patrick whispers from the bathtub, fingers pressed to the largest bruise on his ribs.  

“With all due respect, sir,” Hurley begins in a way that suggests he’s about to anything but respectful. “If Lady Victoria doesn’t already have her suspicions — and I can assure you that fetching your stable master on your honeymoon is incredibly _odd_ behaviour — then a few bruises are unlikely to garner further attention.”

“It’s her wedding night,” he feels sick simply saying it out loud. She’s young and women are so romantic about these things, how can he possibly live up to the Jane Austen imaginings she must have whispered about with Lady Lindsey? “I — I don’t know… What do I _do_?”

“I believe you’re rather well acquainted with the _physicality_ of the act,” Hurley appears to be going out of his way to make this as unpleasant as possible which Patrick, somewhere amongst the panic running a merry riot in his bloodstream, manages to decide is really rather startlingly unsporting of him, “As for the mechanics of what goes where, well, I’m confident you’ll work it out for yourself. I certainly shan’t be drawing you a diagram.”

“Why are you being so very unkind?” Oh, but he hates the petulance burning black and bitter at the edges. “That poor girl,” he means to include himself but can do so only via implication as he snatches at the towel and rises to his feet, “I’m so very — ill equipped for this.”

Somehow — and Patrick can’t for the life of him fathom how — Hurley manages to say _oh do stop being such a terrible bore, get a hold of yourself and show some dignity_ with nothing more than a slightly raised eyebrow. Patrick would be impressed if it weren’t for the hot streaks of fear shooting sharp through his chest as he draws his nightshirt over his head with trembling hands. His wedding ring still feels unnatural against his finger and he wonders if he should take it off, if she’ll be offended, if she’ll hate him more than she clearly already does.

The door beckons. The door and the corridor beyond it, the staircase and Pete’s room below them, the carriage and — eventually — the continent. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, he has an education, a fine name, if _William_ can be a surgeon then surely Patrick could find _some_ way to make their lives comfortable. In the split second before he can make his escape, in the ticking moment between _thought_ and _action_ , there’s a hesitant knock on the very door he can no longer escape through. He glances at the window speculatively. He’s three floors up.

The room is suddenly full of far too many people that know he’s about to have sex with his wife. Hurley, Victoria herself, her chamber maid and Lady Lindsey for some unfathomable reason. For a stomach-churning moment Patrick imagines that Lindsey might intend to stay, to sit at the side of the bed and glare at him whilst he does everything wrong. He’s close to convinced that he’s about to be violently sick.

Hurley leaves, holding the door pointedly for the maid and Lady Lindsey who — thankfully — takes the hint and follows him with a final reassuring squeeze of Victoria’s hand. The door closes behind her and Victoria seems to find the cornicing above them unbearably interesting. Personally, he’s rather more interested in the pattern on the carpet as his cheeks flame uncomfortably hot.

“Did you — ” he begins.

“I hope that you — ” she starts in the same moment. They trip to a fumbled halt, separated only by the ornate persian rug that stretches between them. He clears his throat and smiles weakly.

“No, please,” he urges. “Go on.”

“Perhaps we should…” she stammers, his heart lurching uncomfortably as she gestures to the bed. “If you’d like?”

He nods, although it’s the exact opposite of what he’d like to do, stumbling slightly on clumsy feet to hover awkwardly by the bed. He’s known no other lips against his own but Pete’s for ten years, no other hands on his body, no one else murmuring to him in the dark. This feels like infidelity, even though Pete knows, it feels like his heart being torn from his chest as he smiles bravely and bleeds though no one cares to see it. Is Pete sleeping now? Pacing the floor of his chamber until the print of his boots is worn into the boards?

Is he with someone else, too?

Oh, Patrick isn’t naive, there’s an abundance of molly houses in Brighton, brothels and ale houses where a man may find company — paid for or otherwise — if he desires it. The thought makes him sway with agony, the bile stinging sharp at the back of his throat as he swallows heavily.

“Are you quite alright?” she asks, concerned for a moment as she sits at the edge of the mattress. “You’ve gone awfully pale.”

“I’m fine,” he lies even though he’s terrible at it, even though Pete has always said it shows in each guilty line of his face as he sits next to her and takes her hand. This is it. If he can just get this unpleasant business out of the way, she can return to her chamber and he can find his way in the dark, unfamiliar house to Pete. “Are you sure?”

She nods uncertainly and he smiles with reassurance he doesn’t feel as he reaches for her hand and squeezes gently, “You looked so very beautiful today,” he whispers with the utmost sincerity — she really _did_ look quite becoming, he’s sure any man of more straightforward tastes would agree. “I was quite the proudest bridegroom in the country, I’m sure.”

“And you were… rather dashing,” she offers, though it sounds like a question rather than a statement and he wonders if he ought to be offended. She seems to realise, a moment of guilt passing her features as she continues hurriedly. “Truly, you looked incredibly handsome.”

“May — ” he stammers for a moment, a deep breath drawn down into his lungs and held — hot and liquid — then expelled slowly before he continues. “May I kiss you, my lady?”

He imagines that a kiss may make things easier. Kissing is pleasurable in and of itself; soft, smooth lips and a gentle, inquisitive tongue. He angles himself slightly better, his hand cupped to her cheek as he draws her closer. There’s no stubble beneath his fingers, no smell of masculinity and leather, not the wide, lush sweep of Pete’s lower lip snagged sweet beneath the pad of his thumb, nipping teeth grasping like a teasing promise of things to come…

Their lips nudge and she stiffens, drawing back and away from him as though on instinct. He pulls back, hands light against her shoulders as he stares down at the counterpane and wishes he were anywhere — anywhere at all — other than this bed, in this house with his wedding ring biting into his finger like a vice. She’s just a girl, he reminds himself, just twenty and has probably never kissed a man before. She leans in again with resolve in her eyes and this time, when their lips touch, she manages not to pull back. A few seconds of stiff spines and awkward hands and his cock is still entirely limp between his legs as she tugs questioningly at his nightshirt.

“Perhaps you should...” she pauses for a breath before continuing stiffly. “You should get undressed.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, hoping desperately that she’ll say no. “We don’t _have_ to, it’s been a long day and you’re probably quite exhausted — ”

“No,” she insists, moving back to give him space as he fiddles uselessly with a loose thread on the counterpane. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears, behind his eyes, trembling through his fingertips. “It’s our wedding night.”

He can’t deny the accuracy of the statement as he awkwardly shuffles his nightshirt up to his hips. His entire face feels engulfed in flame-bright heat, the blush burning bright to the very tips of his ears as she politely looks away. A deep breath is drawn, steadying him from the whisky-slurred wooziness that catches with his pulse to roar through his bloodstream. Brandy would be good, he decides as he steels himself and drags his shirt over his head, opium would probably be better.

If there’s one thing he finds particularly unfair about the situation, it’s the resolution of his prick to remain entirely flaccid against his thigh. He keeps his eyes fixed on it as he waits for her to do something (anything, please) and it stares back; pink, plump, morosely defiant and entirely useless against the red-gold curls at the base.

Patrick learns several things over the course of the following few minutes. First, he learns that it’s entirely possible for one to blush on every inch of one’s body from the top of the head, to the very tips of the toes. He also discovers that there is no way to stir a limp cock into life if that cock feels entirely uncooperative. Furthermore, he finds that he feels completely ridiculous surreptitiously tugging at his prick whilst his wife pretends nothing untoward is happening. If she notices the bruises that litter his body, then she’s too polite to mention them. He’s grateful for that.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, burning with humiliation as his cock remains resolutely soft in his hand. “I just…”

She leans forward, gaze fixed blandly between his legs as she mutters a response, hand extended and fingers reaching for his lap, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from her skin, “Perhaps I can help — ”

“No!”

They both jump at the vehemence of it. In the aching chasm of silence that follows, Patrick swears he can hear it echoing; around the room, the house, through his skull and into the hollow cavity of his chest. His heart is at a gallop, breathing uneven and much too fast as he scrambles back into his nightshirt as though it were his only defence. Apologies and half-formed fumblings battle for freedom from the frozen-thick twist of his dull-witted tongue. He garbles murmured pleas for forgiveness, for time, for just a moment or more to compose himself as his lips stain hot and salt-bright with tears he scarcely acknowledges are falling.

At least, he imagines apologies and pleading for forgiveness, in reality all he manages to choke out over and over again is Pete’s name, a tangle of sticky syllables over his lips. Victoria seems thoroughly bewildered for a moment, eyes wide as she watches him heave breathless sobs into his hands. He can’t do it. He simply _can’t._

“Pete?” she repeats softly. “You — you mean Lewis? The coachman?”

Everything stills. His breath stolen sharp from his lungs, his heart seeming to thunder to a stop as he stares, frozen rigid with fear and awaits the shouting, the screaming and crying and _fuss_ that’s sure to follow.

“Are you and he…?” she trails off and he manages to breathe. She doesn’t seem angry, doesn’t seem much of anything at all as he nods cautiously. “Oh. I see. Well, that explains — rather a lot, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats miserably, addressing the apology to his hands. He _is_ sorry, he _always_ seems to be sorry for something; for being forced to a place where he can’t be quite the man he wants to be for anyone around him. If only life were fair and he’d been able to marry Pete, to take in an heir or two from one of those frightful baby farms. Instead, he’s forced to hurt Pete, to hurt himself and, above all, to hurt this innocent woman in the process. “Perhaps, given time to — get used to it. Maybe I could — ”

She cuts him off with an abrupt snort, already on her feet, crossing to the door without another word. It clicks closed behind her and he’s left with nothing but the panicked rise and fall of his own breathing. His father can’t say he didn’t try, can’t claim he didn’t do all that was asked of him, the failings of biology aren’t his cross to bear and yet… And yet he feels as though the very walls are closing in around him. He can imagine what will happen in the morning, her cases packed, her father’s solicitor instructed to seek recompense for the breaking of their marriage contract. Oh God, he’ll be a total laughing stock amongst the ton, a silly old molly left to pace out his days in isolation.

The door opens and he damn near screams with the shock of it, jumping violently against the mattress as she steps back inside with a wry little smile. Before he can question it, before his lips can move to frame the words, Pete steps in behind her, shirtless and barefoot with his breeches half unbuttoned. He looks like a man roused from his bed as he closes the door quietly behind him and, as eyes honey-bright meet with his own across the room, Patrick feels the ridiculous burn of tears once more.

Pete covers the room in a couple of strides, gathering Patrick close to the warmth of his chest as he murmurs soft reassurance into his ear. Patrick leans into him and claims the scent of his skin, the way the planes of his back shift under Patrick’s hands as he presses as close as the very laws of physics allow.

“Patrick?” He glances up at Victoria, confused momentarily at the reminder that there’s someone else in the room with them. “We don’t have to do this.”

He very relieved to hear it but he knows it’s simply not true. “Our fathers,” he says, wishing he weren’t forced to state the obvious, “they expect an heir. Perhaps not tonight or tomorrow or next week but… at some point soon.”

“You silly old boy,” Pete murmurs into his hair, bright with affection as he and Victoria smile a conspiracy at one another. “The method of delivery is — changeable. All you really need to do, dearheart, is provide the necessary ingredient.”

“The necessary…” he trails off with a frown that deepens to a scowl as Pete barks his ugly laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t…”

“Sweetheart,” Pete takes Patrick’s face in both hands and dusts a kiss to his forehead that feels, quite frankly, entirely patronising. “It means you don’t need to defile your beautiful wife. I can help you to provide everything she needs to produce a fine little Stumph for your father’s approval.”

“Oh! You mean… I see,” Patrick clears his throat and feels himself flame crimson once more. “Well then… Splendid.”

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Victoria smiles with a hint of wickedness about her. A devilish charm that makes Patrick hope — oh, how he hopes — that perhaps they can become friends after all. “I hope the rest of your night is rather more enjoyable than it’s been so far.”

“Are you — upset?” he asks with an awkward lack of grace as Pete sits beside him on the mattress and takes his hand. “I hope I didn’t — ”

“Not a word of it,” she holds up a hand to silence him. “I’ll be in my own chamber, I’m sure Lady Lindsey will be more than happy to keep me company for the night.”

“Goodnight,” Patrick calls after her, waving like a child and unable to feel even slightly embarrassed by it. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, dear husband,” she parries with a laugh, the door closing behind her.

Pete falls on him with wolf-like hunger.

Hands grasp under his nightshirt, sliding deft and sure along his ribs as the linen is yanked over his head and cast to the floor, warm lips trailing in their wake as Pete nuzzles over the heated flush of Patrick’s skin. He’s delighted to discover his cock is entirely interested in the change of proceedings, swelling thick and hard in Pete’s grasp as he noses just beneath Patrick’s jaw. He works a hand into the tight confines of Pete’s breeches, fingers closing around the length of him as Pete murmurs into his ear.

“She seems a lovely girl,” he growls, nipping hard at Patrick’s earlobe, lightning-bolt sensation firing straight to his prick. “But I’m rather glad you’re just for me.”

A witty retort is snatched from him as Pete’s thumb slides along the slippery crown of his cock, smoothing and rubbing until Patrick is shuddering beneath him.

“I could suck you,” he offers, teeth grazing just above the throb of Patrick’s pulse in his throat. “I could have you fuck my mouth until you’re all I can taste. Then I could turn you over and fuck that beautiful arse of yours after you’ve come, when you’re all soft and it’s so good it starts to hurt,” Patrick whines as warmth rushes to his groin, his pace on Pete increasing as he tugs desperately at the lust-gorged length of him. “Would you like that, my darling boy?”

“Oh, _God_ ,” Patrick groans, thrusting up into the clasp of Pete’s fist, rutting against his palm, the sticky, delicate tip of his cock rubbing against Pete’s hip. Pete slides a thigh between Patrick’s legs, heated skin bringing beautiful pressure against the tight tuck of Patrick’s balls. “And — _fuck_ — and if I’d rather fuck you? Then what?”

“Then,” Pete whispers, pausing to lick over Patrick’s throat. “Well, _then_ I suppose we have nothing but time, do we, _my Lord_?”

Patrick feels lost, reduced to absolutely nothing beyond the way his cock throbs in Pete’s hand. He tips and tilts his hips, desperate for that precise angle, for something pressed to the bruised-raw tenderness of his hole (still utterly fucked raw from the night before) for Pete to rake, bruise and bite him bloody. But Pete is controlled, wide mouth quirked to a grin as each — stroke — pulls — precisely — and Patrick wonders if he’ll die beneath him, sprawled on his honeymoon bed with his stable master’s cock in his hand.

He can’t imagine any other way he would prefer to go.

He’s close now, thrusting hard and fast as friction burns and tension knots low in his belly. His nails find the taut stretch of Pete’s arse, sinking sharp as he closes his eyes, bites his lip and waits for galaxies to paint his world white.

“Fuck,” he gasps, shoving Pete away with a groan, hands clasped to the sheets as his prick strains pink and hard and utterly _furious_ between them. “The brandy glass.”

“What?” Pete appears thoroughly baffled.

“The fucking brandy glass you utter fool,” Patrick gestures wildly as his cock leaks desperation. “Hand me the fucking _glass_.”

Confused, Pete shuffles to his feet, his cock, red and stiff and no doubt aching as sharply as Patrick’s, rising proudly from the fastening of his breeches. He returns, cut crystal in hand, and hands it over with all the wary reticence of a man that seems to think Patrick may intend to beat him to death with it at any moment. Patrick hisses, sharp and hard and burnt-bright vicious as the tender tip of his throbbing prick grazes the smooth cold of the glass in his fist.

“Alright,” he says as Pete boggles at him from the edge of the mattress. “Come along, darling, as you were…”

“What in the name of God do you imagine you’re doing?” Pete queries, eyebrows raised as though Patrick has gone quite mad.

“Really now,” Patrick rolls his eyes although, he has to admit, his ardour is cooling slightly under Pete’s judgemental stare. “Is it not obvious?”

“Not even slightly,” Pete is kneeling between his legs at least, cock framed in the grasp of his palm as he strokes himself slowly. “Enlighten me.”

“For… Victoria,” Patrick is trying, so help him he is, stroking quickly at his cock but that deep, burning glow from before is receding, the urge drifting away from him. He gasps, hips arched as Pete knocks his hand away and begins to stroke him once more.

“I see,” Pete’s smirk is somewhere between amusement and arousal. “And do you intend to keep your cock in there the entire time? Or am I practicing my fielding skills? I haven’t played cricket since school, forgive me if I’m a little slow…”

“Be quiet,” Patrick groans legs spread and two fingers pushed inside of himself. He clenches around them, sore and throbbing and utterly, maddeningly perfect. “Just… Hush.”

For the next few minutes it’s hard to think of much at all beyond the ache of his prick in Pete’s hand and the heat that tears through his veins as he spills, hot and pulsing, the underside of his cock rubbing deliciously against the glass.

“Her first trinket from her husband,” Pete muses a few minutes later, flushed and sweating with come dripping from the tip of his own softening cock as he considers the contents of the glass. “I fear you’ve set the bar rather too high, my love, no gift will ever match up to this.”

“Take it to her,” Patrick waves a hand dismissively, exhaustion seeping through him to tangle sweet and comforting, to haul him down below the surface and grant him some relief from the overwrought emotion of the past twenty-four hours. “There’s a good fellow.”

“I think not,” Pete replies, already beneath the sheets and stretching, his toes wiggling luxuriously against the silk. Patrick thinks very little of his father in law but the man really does have exquisite taste in bed linens. “Take it yourself.”

“You know,” Patrick tries his best to inject authority into his tone. “I _am_ your employer, you’re _supposed_ to do the things I ask of you. Technically, I could _make_ you…”

“Then make me,” Pete goads, eyes already closed, an arm thrown up over his head as he heaves a sigh. “Go on, I’m waiting. Make me.”

So, Patrick finds himself, at close to eleven o'clock in the evening, wandering the halls of his father in law’s seaside townhouse with a brandy glass of his own come clutched in his hand. He knocks tentatively at Victoria’s chamber door and waits, anxiously, for her to answer, shuffling his weight from foot to foot as he stares down in fascination at the contents of the glass. Is it a generous amount? Something he should be proud of? There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot there — perhaps he should consult his physician? Surely there’s no harm in finding out —

“Patrick?” she asks, rather the same look of confusion on her face that Pete wore minutes previously. “Is something wrong?”

“I brought you this,” he explains hurriedly, attempting to push the glass into her hand. She takes it from him and peers down, puzzled, at the contents. “For… you know. The baby.”

“Oh, good _God_ ,” she gasps, thrusting it back into his hand with a look of undisguised horror. “No thank you!”

“But…” he trails off for a moment as embarrassment paints him scarlet once more. His very teeth _itch_ with the humiliation as he stammers. “But you said — ”

“I didn’t mean _now_!” she replies, already halfway to shutting the door. “Good _night_ , Patrick.”

He isn’t entirely sure, but he thinks he hears a burst of laughter from the other side of the oak as the door swings closed between them. For a moment, he merely blinks, eyes bouncing between the glass in his hand and the panelling of the wood before he turns with a sigh and makes his way back towards his own chamber.

“My Lord?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin — spilling the blasted come all over his hand in the process — as Hurley apparates seemingly out of nowhere, his eyes on the glass.

“Ah, Hurley,” he stutters, praying for one of the large portraits adorning the walls to fall and crush him to death immediately. “This is… Well…”

“I know _precisely_ what that is,” Hurley informs him grimly, taking a careful step to the side. “Please, my Lord, do both of us the most immense favour and never _ever_ tell me.”

~*~

Sunlight dapples his eyelids golden as he lies back in the grass with his head in Pete’s lap.

Pete is reading the book of poetry Victoria has written, his fingers carding gently through Patrick’s hair as he taps the rhythm of each poem with his foot. Patrick is warm in the early summer sun, warm and deeply content as the breeze whispers through the branches above them. He finds himself happy in Roseworth Hall, far happier than he ever imagined he could be, Pete curled in his bed each night and his wife in her chamber down the hall, belly swollen with his child.

It’s all really rather marvellous.

“This one,” Pete says, voice soft and low as he begins to read out loud. “What says the sparrow, tied upon its bough, Without the one for whom its heart does long, What says the love that cannot speak its vow, What can the sparrow do, but sing its song.”

“Wonderful,” Patrick agrees with a lazy smile. “She wrote that one for Lady Lindsey, they share such a beautiful friendship, it’s really rather sweet.”

“Friendship?” Pete repeats, with the kind of heavy inflection that makes Patrick open his eyes, that has him squinting through the sudden brightness in confusion. “Really?”

“Of course,” Patrick struggles to his elbows, eyes drawn to the window of the house that fronts Victoria’s chamber. The curtains are drawn; she does so enjoy a nap in the afternoons and Lady Lindsey is awfully good about keeping her company. She swears she doesn’t get bored whilst Victoria sleeps, that there’s plenty to keep her entertained. “You’ve seen the two of them together.”

“I have,” Pete agrees, a bright grin bold on his lips. “You’re right, they really are _such_ good friends….”

Patrick decides it may be best to assume Pete is slightly simple and ignore him entirely, eyes closed and mind drifting sweet and lovely as the clouds streaking the high blue canvas above them. He should find shade, he’ll turn the most awful shade of red in the sun if he doesn’t. He should roll to his stomach and nose through the smell of Pete’s skin, the way it gathers in his breeches at the crease of his hip. Pete shifts beneath him, thighs flexing as he urges Patrick back gently, untroubled by his irritated groan.

“Come along now, up with you,” Pete urges, fingers soft in the sweat-damp curl of hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck. “I’ve got work to do and you… have to do whatever it is a gentleman does in the afternoon.”

“Are you implying I have nothing important to do?” he queries lazily. “I’ll have you know that there are books to be read, horses to be ridden and,” he pauses to slide his hand slowly along the seam at Pete’s thigh, higher and temptingly close to the bulge of his cock beneath the linen, “handsome stable masters to attend to.”

“Hmm, some other time,” Pete is already on his feet as Patrick pouts up at him from the grass. “I have far too much to do this afternoon, Decima is likely to foal at any moment and Trohman is a lazy bugger if left to his own devices for too long…”

“Tonight, then?” Patrick prompts, trying to disguise the hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d found a quiet spot somewhere in the woods under the guise of exercising this horse or that. He has no idea why Pete is suddenly so anxious to relieve himself of Patrick’s company. “After dinner. We could — ”

“I’ll be in the foaling box all night,” Pete shrugs as though it doesn’t matter, though he won’t quite meet Patrick’s eyes, his hand drifting guiltily towards his pocket. Patrick’s eyes narrow; does Pete imagine he’s some kind of fool? “You know how these things are, dear boy.”

“Show me,” Patrick says, pointing to the pocket of Pete’s breeches without preamble. He climbs to his feet, unwilling to conduct any unpleasant conversation from such a disadvantaged position. “Come on, whatever it is you’re stroking at, show it to me.”

“It’s nothing,” Pete insists lightly, which means that it must absolutely be _something._ “Nothing at all.”

“Come now,” Patrick teases. “Is it a love letter? Is someone attempting to court you away from me?”

Pete’s mouth sets, a grim, determined line slashed across his face as his eyes spark with challenge — and not the fun kind, no, the unpleasant, confrontational kind — his dark brows drawn down as he scowls. If Patrick thought whatever it was might be fairly innocent, he thinks the exact opposite now.

“It’s not your concern,” Pete snaps, his hand sinking into his pocket and fisting around whatever it is.

Patrick immediately decides that whatever it is, it absolutely _is_ his fucking concern as he lunges for Pete’s pocket. Pete twists away with a growl, shoving at Patrick’s arm before striding away towards the stable. Anything playful about the exchange turns immediately darker as he hurries to keep up.

“What the devil is the matter?” he asks, irritation underscored by the thud of his boots to the cracked-glass marbling of summer-scorched earth. He snags Pete’s elbow in his fist, attempting to haul him back, Pete snatches his arm free and walks on, eyes riveted on the stable block ahead. “Pete? Speak to me!”

Pete declines the rationality of normal interaction, choosing instead to make Patrick rush along behind him, the stable boys roused from their idle chatter to watch, wide-eyed as Pete slams into the tack room, the door bouncing hard against the stonework. Patrick cares very little about their audience and hurries in behind him, the door left wide as he approaches Pete, aggressively lining up saddles on the rack.

“What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” he demands, fingers curled into the back of Pete’s waistcoat as he hauls him back to his chest. Pete shrugs him off and carries on, the thud-thump of leather to wood a furious cavalry charge that echoes around the room. “Pete, _please,_ dear boy.”

For a moment, Patrick thinks Pete simply won’t reply, his head bowed as he rubs furiously at an imaginary speck on the pommel of one of the saddles. His shoulders tense, high and rounded defensively and Patrick’s heart hums a messy throb in his chest. _Is_ it a love letter? Has Pete made good on that threat from a different lifetime, laid beside the lake when he declared his intention to find himself a good woman and fill the coach house with children? Patrick can’t breathe, another of those nervous coughing fits threatening to consume him whole as his hands shake at his sides.

“It’s my father,” Pete mutters eventually. Patrick feels his eyebrows raise involuntarily. He knows so little of Pete’s parentage, just that his father was apparently important, Count Wentz, Grand Duke of Hardenberg (or something terribly tongue-twisting in German),  rich and influential enough to want to avoid a scandal with Pete’s birth. He knows the man achieved this by sending Pete’s mother, with newborn Pete at her breast, to Badminton House with a sum of money sufficient enough to secure his education and connections suitably oiled to ensure a good position with a good family. But none of that explains why Pete is acting as though there are military secrets tucked into his pocket.

“I don’t understand,” Patrick says, because he doesn’t. Not at all. “What about him?”

“He’s…” Pete falters for a moment, sweat gleaming damp on his brow as he stares at the floor, his hands, the scuff of his boot against the cobbles. “He’s asked me to go to Saxony. I’ve agreed.”

“Oh,” Patrick takes a step back for a moment, a smile sweet at the corners of his lips. A trip to Saxony, a month at most surely, not ideal but hardly the end of the world. “Well, I’ll miss you dearly but — ”

“I don’t know when I’m coming back,” Pete cuts over him roughly, eyes hard and finally meeting Patrick’s. “I don’t know _if_ I’m coming back.”

Patrick feels all of the air leave his lungs — the room, the very surface of the earth, most likely — in one sudden rush, the atmosphere around him suddenly too thick, too burning-fire-bright to draw into his chest as he stares. Pete shrugs delicately, the ghost of a sad smile haunting his features as he gestures weakly.

“Would you have me settle for nothing but this?” he asks quietly, the sweep of his hand encompassing eleven years between them and dismissing it entirely. “You’re married now, you’ll be a father soon enough. I have an opportunity for something more.”

“You have the opportunity for happiness right here,” Patrick whispers, voice barely a rasp from the back of his throat. Pete steps closer to cup his cheek but Patrick ducks away. His ribs feel too tight, his stomach churning as the room seems to swim around him, white-spot-bright like the off sensation of waking in a nightmare. “You’re serious?” Pete nods slowly. “You’re fucking _serious_? Eleven _fucking_ years thrown away on the — the _whim_ of some rich bastard that sent you away rather than acknowledge your very existence? Go. Just — just _go_ and see how fucking happy you can be in _Saxony_.”

Pete tries to shush him, eyes on the door and Patrick knows everyone in the stable will be listening, eyes wide and scandalised glances exchanged. Patrick quickly decides he doesn’t care at all what they might think as tears sting salt-bright to film his vision blurred and streaked.

“No!” he shouts, shoving Pete back roughly as he tries to draw him close once more. “Go and find yourself a nice little Saxon girl, fuck her full of children and lead a life as your father’s fucking stable hand.”

“Patrick, _please_ ,” Pete begs. Let him beg, let him plead and cry and ache down to his bones, Patrick is beyond tired of the whole conversation.

“Fetch me a horse, Lewis,” he demands, defiant in the middle of the room. Pete falters for a moment, fumbles for an appropriate excuse that seems to evade him, that must slip through his fingers like grains of sand because he can’t offer one, just another plea for Patrick to calm down. “Saddle Petronius. Now.”

“You’re in no fit state,” Pete objects, sharp as nails and hard as iron, eyes ablaze with golden fury as he takes half a step forward with fists clenched tight. “One or both of you will be killed. I won’t allow it, Patrick, I – ”

“ _Lord Worcester_ ,” Patrick snarls, meeting Pete’s step forward with one of his own. Pete looks as though he wants to shake him but falls silent with humiliated rage as Patrick continues. “You are _not_ my equal, Lewis, and it would serve you well to remember that. You are _not_ a Wentz and you are _not_ a gentleman. You are my groom and you will prepare my fucking horse as instructed. Do you understand?”

“I…” Pete bites off the retort with what appears to be considerable effort. Patrick can imagine what he wants to say, how _Patrick_ was always appropriate when he was on his knees, mouth wrapped around Pete’s cock, the crimson streaks from Pete’s crop bright against the alabaster of his skin. Instead, Pete keeps his teeth clenched tight as he reaches up and tips the brim of his bowler in a sarcastic parody of respect. “As you wish, _Lord Worcester_.”

With that he hefts the saddle down from the rack and shoulders the appropriate bridle, striding from the tack room with his face set dark and furious, a roar tearing from him as he makes his way to the loose boxes, “Get back to fucking work! All of you!”

The stable hands scatter as though they’re running from cannon fire, grabbing brooms and brushes and generally doing a fine job of making themselves look busy as they exchange sly glances and silly smiles. Patrick refuses to flinch, stands by with arms folded and a dismissive sneer on his lips as Pete saddles Petronius and leads him out to the yard and up to the mounting block like the patronising bastard that he is. Patrick snatches the reins from his hand and springs to the saddle, nudging his heels to the stallion’s sides before he’s found his stirrups or gathered the horse’s head and they clatter from the yard with the ring of steel on stone like a call to arms.

“Slow down, you bloody lunatic,” Pete shouts after him as Petronius skitter-scatters against the slippery compacted earth just beyond the yard gate and Patrick slips a little in the saddle, blazing hot with humiliation and fury as he raises his middle finger in response.

He finds his seat, finds his stirrups and finds himself urging Petronius into a fast canter down the sloped fields. He doesn’t want to think beyond the furious thunder of hooves beneath him, doesn’t want to imagine Roseworth Hall without Pete in it. Most of all, he has no intention of acknowledging the unfairness of it, the fact that he’s granted Pete all he can and it still isn’t enough. The thought leaves his tongue sour, his eyes burning and his chest heaving sharp and painful as he sets his heels in and urges Petronius to a gallop.

They take the gate with ease.

Patrick thinks — though he tries not to — around the rock of the horse beneath him. He thinks and he draws the only seemingly obvious conclusion; Pete has never cared for him a whit. He’s been a convenient distraction until something more interesting presented itself, something to laugh about. He flushes bright with crimson embarrassment as he wonders; is it because he takes Pete’s cock so willingly? Is it easy to pretend with his eyes closed and his hands on Patrick’s hips that there was no prick trapped against the mattress?

Thinking is rarely the correct course of action, especially in matters of the heart, but the bandage is unwound and Patrick intends to pull and prod and poke at the wound beneath until it’s raw and bleeding. His heartbeat is too fast, his breathing too sharp as he leans his weight onto his knees, tucked tight to the leather beneath them. Peter fucking Lewis can go to hell.

The hedge looms ahead, at least five feet high and thick with summer lushness. Patrick should turn Petronius, should head for a gate or, better yet, turn back. Patrick has never been particularly good at doing what he _should_ above what he _wants._

Patrick kicks on.

He knows from the moment Petronius lifts his front hooves that he’s misjudged the take off horribly. He can feel it in the way the horse lurches beneath him, twisting sharply as he springs off with powerful hind legs. Idiotically, he doesn’t do the sensible thing and grant the horse his head, or the second most sensible thing and hurl himself sharply to the side and leave the stallion to make the jump uninhibited by his weight. No, instead he does the most ridiculously foolish thing available to him and braces his weight to his toes in the stirrups, standing entirely upright and unbalanced, and yanks sharply back on the reins as though he can pull Petronius back to the ground with sheer force of will.

He doesn’t see the branch until it’s far too late to shield his face and it stings, whip-sharp and burning, as it snaps smartly against his brow. There’s something hot and wet in his eyes almost immediately but he doesn’t have time to wipe it away as Petronius, with Herculean effort, somehow manages to clear the hedge. Patrick has less than a heartbeat to celebrate his marvellous good fortune before he — and Petronius — see the ditch on the far side. The horse tries to stretch to accommodate but, as Patrick thumps inelegantly back to the saddle, he pecks the landing and Patrick pitches over a sweat-flecked shoulder to slam to the floor with a sickening thump.

He has but a moment to think that he might possibly have pulled that off with nothing more than a bruised shoulder before Petronius tumbles after him, the pommel of the saddle rolling hard and unyielding over his thigh with a loud _crack_. He tries to scramble to his knees, to get himself upright so he can assess his horse, guilt rocketing through him as he swipes the sweat from his eyes. His cuff comes away crimson. It’s not sweat.

He tries once more to kneel but agony bursts in sun-ray waves from the point the saddle impacted his thigh, his scream of pain burning raw from his throat. He hears rather than sees Petronius fumble upright and the receding thunder of his hooves as he gallops away, thoroughly spooked. As Patrick lies on the lip of the ditch, bleeding and broken both inside and out, he at least takes comfort in the knowledge that Petronius is fine.

Then Patrick does the most sensible thing he’s done so far today.

He passes out.

~*~

Pete has been thinking and Pete has decided several things.

First, he now comprehends the pressure of familial obligation. The lack of understanding that he afforded Patrick when Lord Beaufort demanded he marry for the sake of family pride had seemed so utterly foreign to him. The very idea that he should care about the man whose involvement in his life ceased with little more than an orgasm seemed laughable.

And yet.

Somehow, the loop and scrawl of handwriting that suggested frailty but looked so similar to Pete’s own had pulled something deep within him. The words hung with a promise that could possibly be rearranged into a happy ending simply prove too much to dismiss entirely out of hand.

Pete has also discovered that the pull he’s felt to Patrick for the past eleven years isn’t enough to stop him craving more. He wants a forever, to be the subject of the love story and not merely referenced amongst the footnotes. It breaks his heart to admit it, but an absence followed by eventual happiness seems the better option for both of them. Not that Patrick will listen to reason or see sense which is why Pete finds himself, anxious beyond all rational thought, searching the estate for signs of his errant lord and master.

“I think we should let him come home when he’s hungry,” Joe says, irritation razor sharp as he slouches in his saddle and peers with disinterest across the fields rolling away from them. “I’m sure his lordship wouldn’t be out looking for _me_ if I took myself off on a little jaunt for the afternoon.”

“That’s because you’re of no interest or use to anyone,” Pete counters, standing in his stirrups to grant himself a better view over the hedgerows. “We’d just be glad of the peace and quiet.”

Pete hums with fear, it closes his throat and cramps his stomach as he searches desperately for a flash of Patrick’s white shirt, for the glow of golden blonde hair. There’s nothing; just endless green and the echoing cry of the others out searching across the woods and fields that make up the estate.

“Patrick?” he calls, the need for propriety in front of the staff long since forgotten. “Patrick! Where the bloody hell are you?”

“He’s not here,” Joe grumbles, kicking his mare into a trot. “And we’re going too bloody slowly to get this done before dark, come on.”

They circle the lower end of the field, flanked by hedgerows and cloying with the smell of cow parsley. If he weren’t looking for it so closely, he might miss it, the flash in the hedge where the branches are broken and snapped, the recent sense of something — a horse, perhaps — taking an ill-advised leap of faith.

“What on earth is the matter?” Joe asks, circling back with an irritated huff. “Pete…?”

Pete is already down from his horse and scrambling over the hedge himself, half climbing, half falling as brambles tear at his skin, red welts painted sharp and stinging along his arms and face as he staggers over as best he can. He somehow manages it, climbing and pushing and struggling his way over and through until he stumbles to his feet on the other side and searches the immediate area with panic flaring bright and burning in his gut. Then he sees it, the flash of white bundled still in the grass and his heart stops beating entirely.

Patrick is dead.

He has to be, no one lies that still face down in the grass if they’re hale and hearty. No one’s leg bends at that unnatural angle with skin wax pale and carved from cool, pallid marble but for the garnet slick that paints his brow and cheeks. Pete is torn between screaming and emptying the contents of his stomach into the ditch but instead he scrambles to Patrick’s side, knees stained from the grass as he hauls Patrick onto his back, his head in Pete’s lap.

“Patrick,” he murmurs, heart pounding a fierce battle march in his chest as he strokes his chilled, pale cheek. Relief knots his stomach and urges a sob from his throat as Patrick blinks up at him with a smile that seems more like a grimace. “What the devil have you done this time?”

Patrick whimpers, the noise soft and agonised as his fingers curl into the front of Pete’s shirt, streaking the cotton with ruby-bright smudges. “Pete… Terribly sorry,” he whispers. “I seem to have got myself into a spot of bother.”

“Can you stand?” Pete asks, eyeing the way his thigh contorts beneath his breeches and once again fighting the urge to vomit. “No, actually, don’t even attempt it… Trohman! _Trohman_ , you bloody useless fool!”

Joe’s face appears over the hedgerow, circling his mare as he stands in his stirrups to see, “Ah, you found him! Jolly good!”

“Trohman,” Pete hisses, trying his best to control the fury that rages in his chest. He’s not sure if he’s angry at himself for causing the argument, Patrick for being such a reckless fool or Joe for being so painfully stupid. “Go and fetch the fucking carriage and have someone send for the doctor at once. Beckett! Send for Lieutenant Beckett!”

He can hear the thud of hooves as Joe urges his horse into a gallop, the thunder of it dying away and leaving nothing but the frantic pounding of his heart as he rests his brow lightly against Patrick’s and watches him drift in and out of consciousness. He rests a hand on Patrick’s chest, tucked between the plackets of his shirt and reassures himself with the pound and thump of the heartbeat beneath his fingers, the steady rise and fall of his ribs. He closes his eyes, strokes his free hand through gold hair crusted rust with blood and prays that they hurry.

The creak of the carriage arriving in the lane is quite the nicest sound he’s heard for weeks, his voice hoarse as he calls out to confirm their location. A few men appear through the gate — farm hands, he thinks — arms thick with hard work as they grab at Patrick and haul him up between them.

Patrick begins to scream.

“Be fucking careful,” Pete roars, on his feet in a moment and trying to hold Patrick’s leg steady, to grant him some relief but it’s no use, each jolt of a step tears another cry of agony from Patrick’s lips, his nails sinking sharp into Pete’s shoulder. “I know, darling. We’re close, I swear we’re close…”

The carriage ride does little to stop the shouts from Patrick, each jolt or bounce has him crying out, pale-faced and sweating as his teeth clench and his face screws up in pain. He begs them not to move him once they reach the house, pleads and cries like a little boy when Pete points out they have no choice. Up to his chamber, he’s deposited on his bed where the doctor is waiting.

“Who the fuck are you?” Pete snarls, eyes narrowed at the man rummaging through his bag as though he has any right at all to lay a hand on Patrick. “I said to send for Lieutenant Beckett.”

“This is Dr Ross,” Hurley steps forward smoothly. The man has become thoroughly insufferable since he became butler at Roseworth. “It’s really not the position of the stable master to decide which doctor attends to Lord Worcester. Thank you for your help, Lewis, we can manage now.”

“Fuck off,” Pete replies, shoving back to Patrick’s side. The screaming has stopped, replaced with a low, constant moan as sweat mingles with the blood on his brow, copper-scented and sharp. “Where the hell is Lieutenant Beckett?”

“Not here,” Hurley’s tone doesn’t change but his eyes blaze with annoyance. “Dr Ross is a perfectly splendid physician. Now, if you could just…”

“No,” Patrick says, washed weak and trembling, teeth a tremulous chatter in his skull as shock sets in. “Pete, I need — you have to stay.”

Scissors are fetched to slice away Patrick’s breeches, the rich tapestry of purple bruising around the distorted line of his thigh truly shocking to behold. Pete takes the cold, pale hand fisted tight into the bedsheets and strokes his knuckles lightly with the pad of his thumb.

“Terrible business,” Dr Ross murmurs, prodding hard enough to make Patrick cry out. “Yes, that’s going to have to come off, I’m afraid, I’ll need a tourniquet.”

“Off?” Pete repeats, moving swiftly between the good doctor and his bag of tools. “Nothing is coming off, I — ”

“Sorry about this, came as quickly as I could.” The room is suddenly visibly filled with the presence of Lieutenant Beckett. “Terribly tricky moment with a card game. Won the wager in the end though, that bastard Walker will think better of it next time. Still, better late than never, isn’t that right, dear boy,” he nudges Pete’s shoulder with his own as he steps in and takes an experimental poke at Patrick’s thigh. Patrick, unsurprisingly, screams once more. “Ah yes, definitely broken. Not to worry old chap, we’ll have this patched up in no time at all.”

He moves as he speaks, grabbing a neckcloth from Patrick’s armoire and twisting it as he moves back to Patrick’s side. “Terribly sorry, old fellow, I’m afraid I haven’t any chloroform at home. Bite down on this, there’s a good lad.”

Patrick obediently opens his mouth and sinks his teeth into the silk with a whimper. Pete has seen him like this before, in other entirely more pleasurable moments. It seems almost obscene to draw the comparison right now.

Dr Ross has retreated, standing against the wall with wide eyes as though he can’t imagine how he can make himself useful but simultaneously not wanting to miss a moment of the performance Beckett can provide.

“Any laudanum, dear chum?” Beckett asks him cheerfully. Pete wonders how welcome his bedside manner is out at sea. “For me, not him… ha! Just a joke. Oh, you do? Hand it to me, there’s a good fellow, we’ll need that shortly.”

“Isn’t that… terribly addictive?” Pete ventures cautiously. “No. Nothing like that for him, if you please.”

“Give me the _fucking_ laudanum,” Patrick spits the neckcloth from between his lips, “ _Now_! For God’s sake!”

Pete slips the cloth back into his mouth as Beckett appraises the leg once more before nodding at it in an agreeable fashion. “Nothing like cannon fire, that can take a leg clean off. I’ve seen bones _shattered_ by it, just ragged fleshy lumps with what used to be the bone stuck in there like shrapnel, oh the _smell_ when they get infected!” Pete thinks he might pass out. “Alright, chaps. Lewis, isn’t it? I need both of you to help me realign the bone. On my word, you’re both going to haul his leg down and I’m going to relocate it, do you understand?”

“I’m not sure…” Pete begins dubiously. “Won’t that hurt him?”

“Oh, I should imagine so!” Beckett cries heartily, a slap delivered to Pete’s shoulder. “Just get a hold under his knee and the other get his ankle, that’s right. Strong legs for such a little bugger, hasn’t he? That’s a shame, the muscular legs always put up such a dreadful fight. You’ll need to pull hard, you hear, far harder than you think you should. Don’t stop, even when he screams,” Patrick’s eyes widen and his breathing increases to a pant, “because, I can assure you, he absolutely will scream.”

“Beckett,” Patrick spits out the cloth once more, fingers white-knuckle sharp in his counterpane. “Give me the _fucking_ laudanum, you utter — ”

Precisely what Patrick thinks of Beckett is lost in the scream of agony that rips from him as Beckett signals for them to pull. Pete’s heart shatters as Patrick’s face washes damp and hot with tears and pain-bright sweat, mingling with the crust of blood on his brow to tinge his skin pink. Beckett grabs his thigh, manipulating and shoving as Patrick cries out again, the shout giving way with a crack as his throat scrapes raw. Pete swears he can hear bone grating against bone.

“Once more,” Beckett instructs, a mist of exertion on his own brow as he leans his weight against the mattress for a moment. “Three, two, one…”

It seems to take hours — though it can’t be more than a few minutes — until Beckett is satisfied. Patrick passes out from the pain of it more than once and each time he falls, limp and pale and lifeless against the mattress, fear takes Pete’s chest and moulds it entirely from ice until he heaves another breath. Finally, Beckett seems satisfied that he’s done all he can and Patrick is slumped, insensible and drowsy with laudanum. Dr Ross stands, quiet and contemplative as the two doctors assess the work.

“I would’ve amputated.” Ross volunteers weakly.

“Might have to yet,” Beckett proclaims cheerfully. “If that leg turns black, we’ll know. I’ll leave that to you, dear fellow, I’m no good at hacking off legs if the floor isn’t moving.”

“Will he… be alright?” Pete asks softly, fingers carding through Patrick’s hair. Beckett has rinsed his wound and declared the gash too small to stitch and closing already. Pete wonders if it might scar. “He’s not going to…”

He can’t say it. Can’t bring himself to frame the word _die_ with his tongue like lead and his lips useless.

“Hard to say,” Beckett murmurs softly, his hand finding Pete’s shoulder as he squeezes gently. “ _If_ it doesn’t get infected and _if_ we have to amputate and _if_ he doesn’t bleed out and if _that_ doesn’t get infected… He’s going to be off his feet for months, regardless. I imagine he’s going to be utterly insufferable about it.”

“Yes,” Pete shrugs slightly, lips burning with the urge to brush against Patrick’s brow. His heart aches in his chest as he watches the stuttered rise and fall of Patrick’s ribs. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to attend to in the stables…”

Pete would like to add to his epiphany. Pete has learned something new since watching Patrick, pale and lifeless on his bed, and what he has learned is this: love is unending and perfectly impossible to shatter. His love for Patrick will remain if he stays at Roseworth Hall or if he strikes out for something more. His love will remain if Patrick lives or dies but he can’t bear to watch the latter.

Pete’s very being twists in agony at the very notion of watching Patrick fade away, no world or time or universe could possibly exist without Patrick in it. The idea alone of coming to terms with an existence that doesn’t include the curve of Patrick’s smile or the scent of his skin is intolerable. So, Pete will simply walk away, make his journey to Saxony as planned and convince himself that all is well.

He feels the loss down to his very bones as he hauls his packed case from his rooms above the coach house and wonders — with an absent sort of removal from the whole situation — if he ought to feel guilty about not leaving a note. It’s easier this way, he decides as he makes his way down the driveway, intent on spending the night in the village inn before boarding his train to Portsmouth in the morning. He leaves Patrick’s signet ring neatly on the centre of his mattress.

Pete has learned one final thing.

Pete has learned that he will regret not kissing Patrick goodbye for as long as he lives.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left to go! Sorry to leave it on a cliffhanger, and I'm sorry it was so incredibly long but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always lovely or you can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, we reach the end...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday and welcome back to Victorian England. This is, of course, the final instalment of Lord Stumph's adventures, I hope you've enjoyed reading it and I hope the ending is satisfactory.
> 
> Also, the art, as always, by the wonderful, the amazing, the ludicrously talented [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) be sure to go and check out the rest of her art [here on her blog!](http://das-verlorene-kind.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155712566@N06/41270063495/)

Patrick often scoffed at the idea of a broken heart but that was because he’d never been able to countenance it happening to _him._ His first experiences at boarding school were little more than ways to pass the time and alleviate the urges constructed entirely of youthful hormones that raged within him. Then he reunited with Pete and everything was so unutterably perfect that he never imagined the possibility of a parting.

If Patrick ever imagined that they might be torn apart, that they might take their own separate paths in life, he never imagined with any kind of clarity that it would hurt quite as much as it does. He never imagined that Pete could have settled so deeply into his bones that he’d become a part of Patrick himself, an extension as bright and bold as the ink etched to Pete’s stomach.

It has been the best part of a year and Patrick supposes he ought to have moved forward somewhat but it still aches with the same acute agony as the day Hurley broke the news that Pete had left. That he’d taken his case and slipped away whilst Patrick laid, dosed to insensibility on laudanum, his life poised on a knife edge.

The very world seems unsettled now, the undignified sense that someone has subtly shifted his existence half a step to the right and left him disjointed from all around him although all seems correct at first glance. At first, he waited for letters, for some sign that Pete would spare him a passing thought. The hope dwindled like a guttering candle flame until, eventually, Patrick allowed hope to give way to despair. It hardly assists matters that he can hear his wife and dear Lady Lindsey enthusiastically enjoying one another through his chamber wall at what seems to be all hours of the day and night.

If Pete had to be correct about something, Patrick is deeply annoyed that it had to be _that._

Oh, it’s not that he’s opposed to his wife taking pleasure where she wishes — and God knows, he feels foolish enough for not working it out sooner — it’s just that jealousy is a most unbecoming emotion. And he is deeply, unflatteringly jealous that he has nothing but the company of his hand to ease the aches in the darkness. He imagines Pete is probably married by now, his nights measured in the heat of his bride around his cock, her lips crushed beneath his. The thought alone makes his chest ache.

“Sir?” Miss Williams, the new nanny, appears at the door as she does every morning at eleven, his daughter in her arms. “I brought Charlotte along to see you.”

“Where’s my beautiful young lady,” he booms, arms outstretched and a smile bright on his face. Oh, his life may be nothing like how he imagined it but his daughter, his wonderful, fascinating little daughter with her mother’s hair and his eyes, is quite the most enchanting thing he’s ever seen.

She’s crawling now, barely contained by the confines of his bed as she clambers over his legs and climbs up against him to smudge wet kisses against his cheeks. Born a few weeks after Pete left and now nine months old, each month of her life that ticks by is yet another marker of the length of their separation. He plays with her until she grows fractious and bad-tempered — another trait inherited from her father — and Miss Williams sweeps her away to nap in the nursery before lunch. Patrick is once again left to his own devices and, though he has little appetite for it, he decides that today will be a good day and he will take a walk around the estate. William remains confident that he’ll be able to take the saddle again one day, as long as he continues to gently work his injured leg whenever he can.

Once he’s dressed and vaguely presentable, he makes his way down the staircase, wincing at the way his thigh pulls tight and painful beneath his trousers. He barely recognises the stable master as he takes a quick tour of the stable block, sugar lumps bulging his pockets and a word and ear scratch for each of his favourites.

“Trohman’s left,” the stable master — McCoy? — informs him briskly as Patrick loiters against the gate to the paddock and feeds treats to Petronius over the bars. Patrick feels his eyebrows raise involuntarily; is he really such a terrible employer? Trohman was a loyal servant for over a decade… “I’ll need a new head groom.”

“Yes, of course,” Patrick nods with a sigh. “Whoever you think is best. Where did he go?”

“Someone’s bought Hardwick Hall,” McCoy shrugs as though Patrick should be able to make the link himself. Hardwick Hall is the nearest grand house to Roseworth, a few miles at most to the east across the rolling fields. Patrick has heard mutterings amongst the ton that some foreign fellow bought it after Bryar pissed his inheritance up the wall. Given the horrific memory of shared apartments during their time at Oxford, it makes perfect sense to Patrick; Bryar has always been the most insufferable cunt. “Trohman was asked to be stable master there.”

“Does anyone know anything of loyalty?” Patrick complains as McCoy smiles, a slow, lazy sort of smile. Patrick likes him; tall and handsome and with that twang of the Americas to his cadance. Patrick blames him not at all for fleeing the dreadful fate of people of colour there, took him on immediately once he saw how well the man understood horses. “Is it me, McCoy? Am I an unfair employer?”

“It was a good offer,” McCoy shrugs laconically, leaning against the gate. “Can’t say I blame him.”

“So who’s bought the place?” Patrick asks, scratching under Petronius’ forelock. “Anyone I know?”

“No idea,” McCoy stares out across the paddocks, eyes on the horizon. Patrick envies him his laidback simplicity, the way he never seems to allow anything to ruffle him. Patrick’s thigh is beginning to throb as he makes his way back to the house, leaning on his cane like an old man rather than a youth of barely thirty.

He’ll quite miss Trohman, he decides, he seemed like a link to Pete, a reminder of happier times. Patrick has little interest in finding himself someone else, in truth he would have no idea where to start and the idea of feeling a cock within him that isn’t Pete’s shudders him cold with horror.

“Is something wrong, my dear?” Patrick asks over low tea. Victoria has scarcely spoken a word, head bowed and horribly reminiscent of their early time together. “You seem quite unlike yourself.”

He has drawn her aside, away from the ever present milling of guests, smiling charmingly at the cat calls that they are sneaking away to provide a younger brother for Charlotte. He has no intention of fathering any more children. The Dukedom shall have a Duchess one day and be glad of it.

“It’s Lady Lindsey,” Victoria begins, after an uncomfortable silence.

“Well, what the devil is wrong?” Patrick queries, concerned. “Is she unwell? I can have the doctor attend at once. Not William, I doubt a ship’s surgeon has much to do with — um — issues of femininity but — ”

“She’s quite well, you silly old fool,” she interrupts, hand cupped to his cheek affectionately for a moment. “It’s just that her father has written. He says she’s been in mourning for quite long enough and that it’s high time she married again.”

“Oh.” Patrick allows the implication of that to sink in. Victoria as lonely as he is. “Well — perhaps it shan’t be so bad? There — there will be London, at least?”

“Perhaps,” she sighs and he wishes he had some sparkling suggestion to ease the worries. He really does love her now, though the emotion is purely platonic, “We’ve received a card,” Victoria continues brightly, and Patrick tries his best not to dwell on the forced jollity in her tone. He raises his eyebrows in question and waits for her to carry on. “Some foreign dignitary has bought Hardwick Hall, he’s throwing a ball next week to mark his arrival. It’s terribly exciting, it’s all the ladies can talk about. Apparently he’s incredibly handsome, and just inherited a most ridiculous fortune…”

“Don’t you get any ideas about running off to him,” Patrick warns with apathetic lack of intent. “It’s embarrassing enough to lose my staff to the man, I don’t need to lose my wife to him.”

“I find our marriage perfectly satisfying,” her eyes twinkle at him and he’s suddenly overcome with the urge to take her hand and squeeze it softly, “What on earth has got into you?”

“I just want you to know,” he’s flushed pink with embarrassment, can feel the scorch of it along his cheekbones as he withdraws his hand, “I find our marriage perfectly wonderful and I thank you each and every day for our daughter.”

“You silly old boy,” she mutters, blushing pink and beautiful herself. But she rises briefly to her feet to brush a soft kiss to his cheek as she continues quietly. “You really are quite the most marvellous husband I could have wished for. Thank you.”

Patrick supposes that has to count for something.

~*~

A week later finds him in his bathtub, the hot water doing the most marvellous job of soothing the ache in his leg as he readies himself for the ball. He has no interest in attending, his convalescence having robbed him of his desire to socialise, but they’re the man’s closest neighbours and good manners dictate that they must provide a presence. He fully intends to slip away as soon as is polite to do so.

Something warm stirs in his belly, some low down flutter of long-neglected nerve endings as he reaches under the surface to tease his fingertips gently over the plump flush of his balls. His cock swells, hard and thick and heavy, the pink-tipped crown of it cresting the surface of the water as he arches his hips to look. Slowly, he eases his legs over the side of the tub, the back of his knees resting against the sides as he braces up and ignores the protesting throb in his thigh. The position, legs spread and hips canted up, provides the most wonderful access to his hole, soaped fingers probing gently at the tightness of it as warm water laps lazily around his hand.

He hisses, unused and unstretched in so very long, as he breaches himself with a single finger. He tries valiantly not to imagine the glow of Pete’s eyes, the way he’d looked on his knees between Patrick’s legs but it’s hard not to with his cock throbbing in time with his injured leg. He bites a cry into his lower lip as he works in a second, as he brushes the spot within that makes his head spin. He fucks himself slowly, half an eye on the door, heat rolling out from his groin. When he slides his hand around the blood-gorged length of his cock, he comes almost immediately, his chest and stomach spattered with white heat as he arches up with a groan.

He dresses in his evening wear, black suit and white cravat, annoyed at the way his injured leg and subsequent lack of exercise has thickened his waist and gone some way to covering the line of his cheekbones. Still, what does it matter if no one is to see him? Just another married gentleman, hardly worth paying attention to.

“I still don’t see why we have to go,” he grumbles in the carriage as he fusses with his gloves. It’s humiliation that makes him so very opposed to the idea of socialising. He can imagine the glances painted with falsified sympathy, the way they’ll whisper behind their hands; poor Worcester, with his crippled leg and silly cane, with his stomach rounded beneath his jacket. “Surely we don’t need to bother with this…”

“Now, my dear,” she admonishes softly, squeezing his knee gently. “You know we have to introduce ourselves. He’s our neighbour, it would be unforgivably rude — ”

“Yes, yes,” he huffs into his collar, irritated that she’s correct. “I know but… I’d really rather not…”

“Oh, come along,” she attempts to rally him with a smile, no doubt imagining the many more enjoyable ways she could spend her evening than accompanying her grumpy, curmudgeonly husband to an endlessly tedious ball. “I’m sure you’ll have a marvellous time once we get there.”

The house is obnoxious, Patrick decides uncharitably as they roll up the drive. Too ostentatious, too new, too gleamingly perfect with its manicured topiary and glittering fountain. Everything about it screams new money and he wonders if perhaps this _is_ a noble’s house or some awful son of an industrialist trying to make his name somewhere no one will recognise it. He always has been the most dreadful kind of snob.

He alights the carriage stiffly and with considerable effort, the time spent aboard playing havoc with his leg as he stretches it carefully and tries his very best not to limp as he makes his way to the door. His hat is taken though he keeps his cane, leaning on it subtly as they’re led by a footman through the house and to the magnificent ballroom. It truly is beautiful with high ceilings and marble floors, any rot or ruin repaired with the utmost care and sympathy by someone with an eye for detail. In fact, he’s so taken by a relief of Minerva amongst the gold-hued baroque plaster on the ceiling that he scarcely notices he’s about to be introduced to his host.

“ — Lord Worcester,” he thumps back into the room with a bump as he blinks and clears his throat, hand extended automatically to shake.

“How do you…” he trails off, all air seized with vice-like precision in the heated confines of his lungs as he meets the twinkled shine of a pair of amber eyes and feels his suddenly limp hand seized in a tight and roughened grasp.

“May I introduce the Grand Duke of Hardenberg,” the master of ceremonies intones. “Lord Hardenberg was most insistent that I make the introduction just as soon as you arrived.”

“How wonderful to make your acquaintance,” Pete grins his stupid (loveable, adored, entirely too handsome for his own good) grin at him, all wide lips, white teeth and the run of a pink tongue. Patrick blinks at him, stuttered to a halt of confusing, pressing bewilderment. “Lord Worcester, wasn’t it? I hear we’re to be neighbours.”

Patrick glances around the room and wonders if it’s him or everyone else that’s gone quite mad. He’s fit for the asylum, there’s no other explanation for why Pete left him close to a year previously and is now standing, large as life, in the centre of Bryar’s ballroom and using his father’s title as though he was never meant to be anywhere else. All whilst dressed in exquisite tailoring from, Patrick would guess, one of the more expensive outfitters in London. Patrick wonders absently if anyone else recognises him, if anyone else ever noticed the handsome, charismatic stable master or if he faded into the background, rendered as unremarkable as furniture in his servitude.

It makes no sense, no matter which way Patrick tries to twist and turn and contort it. Pete wasn’t here and now he is. Pete with his father’s title, money and influence to throw around as he buys and renovates a perfectly lovely country manor but no time at all to spare Patrick even a passing fancy in the form of a scrawled note. His heart hurts, physically aches in his chest, as he stares fiercely at a face he knows each inch of, at the cheekbones and brow that he’s traced with his lips, at the mouth that knows the shape of his cock. All Pete does is smile back, polite and pleasant and utterly superficially friendly.

He’s dazed but only for a moment. He’s confused but only for a few heightened heart beats as he stares at Pete and feels bewilderment wash away to utter, aching fury. Pete _left_ , he walked away without a word of explanation and, if Patrick’s being entirely honest, it’s taking every ounce of self-control he never knew he possessed not to land his fist into the centre of that self-satisfied grin.

“I’m afraid I must be unforgivably rude, Lord Hardenberg,” Patrick bows, stiff through his thigh and blazing with the overwhelming urge to dash a nearby glass of champagne across Pete’s face. “I must excuse myself. It’s grown rather too close in here for me to feel entirely comfortable.”

With that he spins on his heel and, as best he can, he stalks away with his head high and his morale low, his fibres frayed and torn to shreds as tears burn and threaten to fall. He’ll take a moment to collect himself in the balmy warmth of the summer evening, just a few minutes to gather his composure and then he’ll be fine.

He’s sure the next introduction that Pete intends to make is to the Lady Hardenberg, and he’s not entirely certain his battered, jealous heart can stand it.

~*~

The room seems to chill by several degrees as Patrick takes his leave so abruptly. Pete is aware of curious stares as the local Duke-to-be makes his excuses and ducks away so very obviously, his ears burning with the hushed whispers that strike up a chorus around them. He’s almost certain that none but dear Lady Worcester actually know who he is or recognise his link to the Marquess and yet his cheeks still flame with embarrassment as he ducks a glance at her from beneath his lashes. He’s so painfully new to this, the hurried lessons on proper etiquette in his father’s castle were barely enough to scratch the surface of the way the nobility conducts itself. But he understands a scornful rebuke delivered with perfect politeness when he sees one and Patrick has just dealt him a death blow.

Not that it matters, not in the grand scheme of things. The title and the lands and the fortune mean precious little when compared to the sum of what they represent; the lifetime of happily ever after that he scarcely dared to dream about the previous summer as he hurried from Roseworth Hall and a man he wasn’t sure would live to see his return. Yet here he is, handsome as always and fierce with rage as he limps away and through the front doors.

“Come along at once and find him,” Victoria urges, her arm slipping into his and calming the wag-tongued gossips around them with a serene smile. “I’ll walk with you and no one will suspect a thing,” she raises her voice from the low murmur intended only for him as he follows along obediently, “it _is_ rather warm in here, Lord Hardenberg, would you be so kind as to escort me to join my husband?”

He smiles weakly at the nearest cluster of guests and follows her through the doors and out into the honeyed warmth of the evening. There is no sign of Patrick.

“Thank you,” he begins earnestly as they make their way across the formal gardens, “it really was _most_ kind — ”

“Not a word, Lewis,” she rounds on him almost immediately, his mouth snapping closed as she pins him with a furious glare. “Do you have even the slightest idea what you did when you left?”

“But — ”

“He was _heartbroken,”_ she hisses, a vicious fingernail jabbed to the centre of his chest. It stings, even through his shirt, waistcoat and jacket and he winces appropriately. “Utterly and totally bereft! And now you embarrass him by reappearing at the house next door? Truly, Lewis, I’m — ”

“Hardenberg,” he corrects absently then immediately wishes he hadn’t as she silences him with little more than a look. “Sorry. Do go on.”

“Where was I?”

“I believe you were telling me what an utter shit I am,” he offers pleasantly. They’ve made their way to the rose garden, the perfume of it overwhelming as they wind between the arches strung with lanterns  and towards the central pergola.

Pete would like to imagine that he senses Patrick before he sees him, the settling sensation of utter completion from merely being in the vicinity. The very air seems to hum with something palpable as he steps forward and finds him, seated on a bench within the pergola, his head in his hands and tufts of soft, blonde hair caught between elegant, pale fingers.

“I see my humiliation wasn’t complete,” Patrick says, voice muffled through his hands as he refuses to look up. “You saw fit to chase me out here and intensify it. Excellent. Could you kindly bugger off and leave me to my misery?”

Pete looks to Victoria for assistance and receives nothing more than a scowl and a firm shove in Patrick’s direction before she sweeps away and leaves them alone. For a minute or two Pete has precisely no idea what to say. He didn’t imagine for a moment that Patrick could ever be anything less than delighted to see him, that their parting would be a minor bump in an otherwise flawless drive. Now that he’s thinking about it, however, perhaps leaving without a note wasn’t the wisest course of action for him to pursue.

“What do you want, Peter?” Patrick asks, his voice broken and so very tired. “After all this time, I — I’d begun to make peace with it. Are you really so cruel? Was I so terrible a — whatever it was we were — that you intend to punish me like this?”

“I don’t understand,” Pete interrupts and truly, he does not, not at all.

“As you wish.” Patrick hauls himself upright with a grimace, a little too much weight braced against the cane to be entirely comfortable, his nose wrinkling in discomfort. “Come along then, introduce me to her.”

“Her?” Pete is thoroughly bewildered.

“The lady of the house,” Patrick snaps, Pete can feel his eyes widen in confusion as he blinks helplessly at Patrick. “Your _wife,_ you utter fool.”

“I — I don’t _have_ one,” Pete offers cautiously and wonders if perhaps Patrick has been abusing the laudanum in his absence. There really is no other explanation. He moves towards him carefully, hands up with palms forward, the way he would a particularly nervous horse. “Patrick, dear boy, are you quite yourself?”

Patrick looks up, soft with bewilderment, the fury ebbing away to sadness as he heaves a sigh and leans against his cane. Pete’s heart aches for the nights he wasn’t there to comfort him, the days Patrick must have spent alone and tormented by pain whilst Pete held court in Saxony. It was for the greater good, he must remember that, it was a benefit for all of them.

He takes another step towards Patrick, another then another until he can cup the satin smooth curve of his cheek and drag his thumb along the lush swell of that thick lower lip. Their mouths drift closer, the hum of twilight bird song lending a dreamlike haze to it all as Pete feels his lips heat under Patrick’s breath. Half an inch more and he can taste him, can claim the lips he’s ached for since the day he walked away, just half an inch and —

“No,” Patrick jolts back and lowers himself to the bench once more, his lower lip caught between his teeth and worried for a moment before he releases it, slicked-damp and shining in the low light. “No, you owe me a bloody good explanation. Out with it.”

“Abridged version?” Pete asks hopefully, Patrick shakes his head. “Damn you, Worcester. All right, I shall keep this concise because you look frankly _edible_ with that cane, dear boy. The letter I was sent was from my father, he was gravely ill and wanted me to go and spend time with him in Saxony before the inevitable.”

Patrick scoffs softly beside him but doesn’t object as Pete takes his hand and gently laces their fingers together.

“His letter made it clear he had no heir, no children at all in fact, beyond me,” Pete pauses for a second before continuing quietly. “He said he’d always wished to acknowledge me, but the scandal kept him silent. Did you know my mother was an opera singer? That was how they met, she performed at some court function and, well, here I am. That’s why he paid for my education, why he had me sent to a good house, so that I would know the basics when…”

He trails off for a moment. Lord Hardenberg — the previous Lord Hardenberg — had been a pleasant man, Pete remains genuinely saddened by his death and regretful that they were unable to spend more time together before it happened. Patrick squeezes his hand with gentle reassurance, something sweet and soft on his face for the first time since their reunion.

“He left it all to me,” Pete says, his voice low. “The title, the castle, the lands and… something of a fortune. I didn’t know what to do with it, of course, still don’t if I’m entirely honest but — ”

Warm lips press sweetly to his, any further rambling stolen from his tongue by the gentle caress of Patrick’s, soft and lovely as he licks into Pete’s mouth. Pete seizes him by the back of the neck, holding him close as Patrick’s fingers fist into the lapels of his jacket. Pete would like to burn the intensity of it into his memory, to recall the exact way Patrick’s mouth slots to his as they groan and whine and lean into one another. He bites that sinfully decadent lower lip, teeth sinking sharp into the swell of it, his own lips pursed around it as he sucks it to plush-plump lushness. Patrick whimpers and throws back his head, encouraging each fluttered kiss Pete can press beneath his jaw but above his collar until they break apart, breathless and shining.

“You bloody fool,” Patrick murmurs, knuckles tracing the curve of Pete’s cheekbone. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“I’m sorry,” Pete’s hand finds the thickened curve of Patrick’s cock beneath his trousers and Patrick groans in a way that suggests he may be close to forgiven. “I handled it poorly. Would you permit me to… make it up to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Patrick grins, wicked and wanton as moonlight as his thumbs hook over Pete’s ears, fingers pushed into the hair at his nape. “What sort of an apology did you have in mind?”

“If you’d be so kind as to accompany me to my chamber, I’d be more than willing to demonstrate,” Pete squeezes Patrick’s cock once more, mouth watering at the way it twitches beneath his palm. Patrick moans softly against his lips. “By God, but I’ve missed you.”

They use the tradesman’s entrance, unwilling to sacrifice a moment to social niceties amongst the guests. Once the chamber door swings closed behind them, Pete descends on Patrick like a wolf.

He presses Patrick back against the door and claims his lips, there’s no rush at all, he can take his time, relish each sigh and moan he can conjure. He nibbles on the silk-soft tag of Patrick’s earlobe, savouring the tang of salt velvet almost as much as he savours the heavenly little whimper that falls from Patrick’s lips. It slides up, the most beautiful falsetto, as Pete slips his thigh between Patrick’s and urges him to grind the swollen throb of his prick against him.

“You know I’m entirely mad for you, don’t you, my darling?” Pete murmurs, fingers deftly unknotting Patrick’s neckcloth then moving to the buttons of his collar. Patrick groans and thrusts faster, eyes closed and head tipped back to the panelling, lips parted deliciously. “Any other men, I want you to forget them — ”

“Other men?” Patrick’s eyes are suddenly very wide, very blue and flooded with incandescent rage. “Other _fucking_ men? Do you see this?” he grabs his cane from against the wall and brandishes it in Pete’s face, “Do you imagine they were forming an orderly queue to fuck the fucking _cripple_? Do you think I wanted anyone but you? I’ve been utterly wretched without you, you absolute _shit_!”

The cane shifts a little in his hand and Pete is suddenly struck by the way the hilt seems slipped into place rather than one solid piece of wood. He raises an eyebrow; Patrick is entirely furious and Pete is trying his best not to laugh, “Is — is that one of those ghastly _sword_ canes?”

Patrick falters for a moment, his gaze drawn to it as he seems to struggle to control the quirk of his lips, “If one must carry a cane, why not make it a sword as well? Really Peter, has Saxony left you so jaded that you wouldn’t enjoy a sword cane?”

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” He walks Patrick back to the bed as he speaks, a light shove to his chest and his knees give out. Patrick is sprawled, flushed and utterly lovely, across Pete’s counterpane. He reaches up to fumble at his shirt buttons but Pete catches his hands and holds them steady. “No, my darling. None of that. Let me… Just let me.”

Pete luxuriates in taking his time, drawing out the removal of each item of clothing, punctuating each button and lace unfastened with a biting kiss to cream-pale skin. By the time Patrick is down to the linen of his drawers, he is little more than a shuddering mess against the sheets, stained with wine-bright bruises that perfectly mirror the curve of Pete’s lips. He imagines, as he smooths a hand too rough to be a gentleman’s down the hitching shiver of Patrick’s chest, that he can see his smirk imprinted, blood-bright and bold.

Thumbs catch in the snag of cotton and linen as he slowly — desperately slowly — eases down Patrick’s undergarments. His cock strains up, prettily pink and perfectly lovely as Pete drops his nose to bury in the red-gold curls that cluster at the root. He smells remarkable; bitter-salt arousal, fresh sweat and male musk, his hips twitching as Pete mouths gently at the swollen softness of his balls. He’s missed him, longed for him with an ache in his chest that he’s scarcely been able to acknowledge, reduced to conveying the loneliness in kisses scorched to trembling thighs. Patrick sinks his fingers into Pete’s hair, lips parted and eyes closed as he gasps.

“Suck me.” Pete recalls those very words, slipping slick over his lips as he’d laid on Patrick’s bed, when happiness had seemed so impossibly, maddeningly incomprehensible. Propped on his side at Patrick’s hip, he trails a testing fingertip along the blood-gorged vein that maps the underside of Patrick’s cock, flirting around the thick, ridged cap of it and watching in fascination as he twitches. “Pete, please, you utter _bastard_.”

“I am _fully_ legitimate, I’ll have you know,” he teases, laving a lick across the sticky crown and staining his tongue with the tang of Patrick’s weeping cock. “Oh, and darling?” he pauses to suck on the tender hang of one of Patrick’s balls, smirking at the crooked circle of Patrick’s fuck-flushed mouth above him. He releases him with a soft, wet sound, “Please, make as much noise as you wish. I can assure you, no one is going to disturb us.”

Patrick’s hands are above his head, crossed at the wrists and pressed beneath the pillows above him. Pete shifts between Patrick’s thighs, jacket shrugged off and dropped carelessly to the floor and neckcloth loosened but nothing else removed. Patrick is a canvas of wanton carnality beneath him, broad brushstrokes of sensuality in the arch of his hips from the mattress and Pete — fully clothed cock rubbing raw in his trousers — can’t resist for a moment longer.

Patrick’s cock is flushed, hard and already leaking, a pale pearl crowning the tip that Pete sweeps away with his tongue. Patrick groans but doesn’t move, legs spread either side of Pete’s shoulders, feet flat to the mattress as he tilts his hips up. Pete can see him, the tight pucker between his cheeks, rose-blush and finely flecked with hair the same shade of copper that frames his cock.

If Pete intended to take his time, to conduct a leisurely symphony against Patrick’s skin until he’s reduced to nothing more than screaming nerve endings and a fucked-raw throat, his resolve is dashed against the rocks as he takes Patrick in as deep as he can. Patrick gasps a curse, back arched and hips strained as Pete fumbles with the buttons of his trousers until he can ease a hand within and tug his own pulsing prick in time with the bob of his head.

“Oh God, Pete,” Patrick whines, barely a framed breath through pouting lips. Pete is consumed by him, entirely taken by the touch-taste-scent of Patrick around him. “Fuck stop, stop or I’ll — I want — fuck! I’m going to come! Not yet, please,” he twists a hand into Pete’s hair and pulls him back, river shore eyes shaded dark with desire, “I want to suck your cock.”

No second invitation will be necessary. Pete struggles out of his trousers and undergarments, snarling a curse when they snag on his shoes until finally he’s down to just his shirt. He has precious little patience left to rectify the matter as Patrick presses him to his back and curls a hand around his hip, urging him forward as he lowers his mouth.

For a moment, there’s simply the kiss of hot breath over the twitching, leaking head of his prick, his fingers carding through the honeyed gold of Patrick’s hair. Patrick glances up, a look on his face that suggests he can’t quite believe that Pete is real. Pete runs his thumb gently over the silvered pink of the scar that neatly severs Patrick’s eyebrow and smiles softly. Patrick’s smile is lost in the sink of his mouth, lush, pink and beautifully wet, over the straining, blood-dark length of Pete’s aching cock.

“Fuck!” Pete declares, all sensible and rational thought robbed from him as Patrick works his prick with deliberate care. The curve of his tongue around the head is like a symphony, the flutter of his thumb just behind Pete’s balls striking humming notes of pleasure low through his stomach.

There can’t possibly be enough air in the room to maintain them both, not enough blood in his body to pulse through his veins and sustain him whilst also sustaining the throbbing length of his cock. If Pete is to die here, right now, lost on linen and silk as Patrick’s mouth works miracles around his cock, then Pete is prepared to greet it without complaint, “Your _mouth_ ,” he groans as Patrick’s lower lip drags against the underside of his cock, “your fucking _mouth,_ Patrick…”

They’re caught —  cock, lips, hands, hips — angles squaring up to make something more, some intangible plane or twisted shape that speaks of nothing more than hushed whispers in quiet places. The _that_ before the _now_. Pete presses him away. The noise of Patrick’s mouth — heavenly, honey-sweet, plump-lipped _mouth_ — slicking spit-wet along the length of his prick may be just about the most wonderful sound Pete has ever heard.

He retracts that almost immediately, replaces it with the noise torn from the back of Patrick’s throat as he twists him over, and kisses — each — notch of Patrick’s spine from he delicate sunken spot where it meets his skull to the nerve-bold point of his coccyx. Patrick is locked tight and frozen, head down and legs spread as Pete kneads the plushness of his arse.

“I’m going to lick you open,” he mutters, the pause punctuated with a bite to the lush round of Patrick’s cheek.  Blood on snow, claret crashed to tile, crimson bright and bold against porcelain. Patrick hisses out a held breath. “I’m going to fuck you with my tongue and then...”

Patrick shudders as Pete opens him up, inspects the delicate rose of him and thinks of lonely nights. Patrick is still, pressed into place as Pete leans in and licks a greedy sweep over him. He does it again, testing teeth against sensitive skin, tasting feeling _being_ as he grinds the length of his cock into the mattress beneath him.

“Fucking hell,” Patrick hisses, white-knuckled grasp fisted tight into the sheets at either side of him. Pete feathers his tongue, flickers it lightly against the rim of Patrick’s hole, mouth pressed flush until he knows Patrick will be scraped raw by the drag of his stubble. “Fuck me wide open, you fucking bastard, make me come then give me your cock,” Pete traces a fingertip to join his tongue, “Yes! I want you to come inside me then lick away every drop and fuck me again. Oh God, YES, Pete, YES! Harder, fucking _harder_ , more, you utter fucking — ”

“Bloody hell,” Pete raises his head as his finger slips inside and Patrick clenches exquisitely around him with a noise like a kick to the stomach, “quite the mouth on you, tonight…”

Another finger, then another, Patrick is burning tight and hot around him, Pete’s head is filled with stars and his cock swollen so hard that he’s sure the slightest pressure will split him apart. There has been no other and never will be, only Patrick, the name seared on his lips between licks he hopes burn down to the nerves beneath. He touches that spot, that delicate hum that breaks the dam that makes up all that is Patrick, that leaves him loose and liquid, crooning sweet sounds as his hips roll into the sheets beneath him. Patrick is soft and open around his fingers and Pete is running perilously short on patience.

“On your back, my love,” he murmurs, another bruise kissed bright and burning to the curve of Patrick’s deliciously solid thigh. Patrick rolls beneath him, soft aside from the draw of his cock, thick-veined and throbbing, flushed and leaking. Pete struggles out of his shirt.

Pete’s hand is slippery with lotion, fingers probing, searching, sliding slick into the depths of Patrick once more, watching as he rides them with a shuddering sigh. Patrick takes Pete’s sinfully swollen prick in his own slicked up palm and Pete is entirely gone.

Pete braces over him, their foreheads touched, sweat-slick and sticky. Patrick’s hair is stuck down to his brow, darkened to fawn hide  where it touches damp skin. His lips are wet-soft- _red_ and pouting, framed to the shape of Pete’s as he kisses him deep and sweet. Pete reaches down and lines up, a hand braced to the back of Patrick’s thigh as he circles, circles, presses forward and —

“Oh, bloody hell!” Patrick gasps beneath him, eyes wide and spine stiff. “Fuck it all!”

Pete springs back, flushed with contrition, “Something wrong?”

“My fucking leg,” Patrick groans. Pete releases him and sits back on his heels, tries not to curse as the fuck-flushed gorge of their cocks brush. “Here, let me just…”

Patrick moves to twist back to his stomach. Pete stills him on his side.

“Like this,” he whispers, sliding in behind Patrick, an arm tight around his waist as Patrick’s arm curls back around his neck. Pete brings his cock to the tight heat of Patrick’s arse once more, feels the soft give of it under the blood-dark weight of him. He licks over the shell of Patrick’s ear and murmurs, lips soft against salt-burnt skin. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you too,” Patrick breathes. “But I’ll love you even more once you’ve thoroughly, utterly fucked me.”

Perhaps Pete shouldn’t laugh. Perhaps he should. Either way, he rests his mouth against Patrick’s, intent on tasting each whine, whimper and moan that will no doubt fall from his lips as, slowly, he eases forward. The head first, popping thick and flared into glorious tight heat. They still, shuddered to uncertainty against one another as all acquaints and they realign like celestial bodies. His nails sink sharp into Patrick’s hip and he thinks that this could be it; the sum total of all he is and all he shall ever be. Nothing more and never anything less. He slips inside as Patrick keens a sound caught somewhere between a moan and a scream, glassy eyes and lush, wet mouth. Pete wantscravestastes.

The noises taste sweeter than they sound, if that were even possible.

He stills, hips flush to the luscious swell of Patrick’s arse, the way they fit together entirely, shatteringly perfect. Patrick breathes, heavy and sharp through his nose, his hand curled tight over Pete’s as they kiss, as Pete licks into the cavern of his mouth. He tastes something smooth, something sweet and sharp and utterly decadent as Patrick tenses around him, rolls his hips and begs — wonderfully wordless — for more.

Pete begins to thrust. He withdraws and impales, stroking deep slow smooth as Patrick flexes around him. He rolls each thrust as Patrick moves with and against him, parrying each push in with a press back, each withdrawal with the scuttering drag forward of his hips. He feels Patrick tense, bathes in the delicious stuttered groan that tears from him as Pete finds that apex of brilliant white heat on each thrust in. Patrick fists his own cock, throws back his head and strokes himself. Pete hooks his chin to the pale line of Patrick’s shoulder and watches, kissing crystalled salt from fuck-flushed skin.

Pete is close and hurtling closer at terrifying speed, the sight of Patrick’s cock sliding wet and wanting through his fist close to unbearable. Patrick bites his lip and bares his throat, Pete bites without further consideration, sucking hard and fucking him with deep, desperate strokes as Patrick stutters, tenses, cries out until Pete’s ears hum with it. There’s the greedy grasp of his arse around Pete’s cock, the way he pulls him in as he comes, as he ribbons his stomach, his hand, his chest and the sheets in delicate pearl-spun lace.

Control lasts for barely a breath more, a shudder of time, the shimmer of thunder after lightning as Patrick slumps back to his shoulder and whispers, hoarse and fucked raw, “Come. Fucking hell, Pete. _Come_.”

He thrusts, deep hard even, mouth open as Patrick grants him a taste of the bitter salt streaked to his chest on a trembling finger. Pete buries his face in the damp heat of Patrick’s pale shoulder, bites his cry into tender flesh that tastes of salt and satiation. Pete pulls out, feels the drag of Patrick’s fucked-out hole around him, pauses then pushes in and feels each fibre of his being unravel.

Pete comes. Sweet heat and the taste of copper salt at the back of his tongue, vision swirled, washed white to sunset pink to deepest, darkest crimson. Each aching throb of his cock is like its split down the seams, each desperate pulse of Patrick’s tender depths enough to have him shouting hoarse around teeth tongue skin. His nerves are burnt raw, his skin a continuous, unending stretch of pounding need as he ruts his softening cock until the tremors slow and he can collapse, boneless, weightless and utterly insensible, into Patrick.

It feels as though sanity returns by degrees.

Body first; the ability to gently withdraw his cock, to roll Patrick to face him and brush sweat-soaked hair from riptide eyes. Next, his sensibility, the power to form rational thoughts that consist of more than the throb of his cock and the ache in his hips. Finally, his voice, rough and hoarse as Patrick nuzzles against his throat.

“Bloody hell,” Pete whispers, and instantly wishes there was something more profound, more poetic, to trip from his lips. “I — I’d forgotten — ”

“Forgotten me so quickly, Wentz?” Patrick’s eyebrows raise lazily, his fingers splayed above Pete’s heart as though he can absorb the very essence of him, take him in and hold him close.

“Not an inch of you,” Pete assures him, fingers pressing to tease around the slick-slip press of his hole, Patrick tenses with a shiver, “not for a second. I’d forgotten how very — how intensely — ”

“I know,” Patrick smiles and brings their lips together. He tastes of stable lofts and the smell of leather, of summer afternoons and lake water sweetened with gooseberries, he tastes of spring storms and winter nights and firelight and all that Pete holds dear.

He tastes of home.

They lie in silence, the sounds of the party — moved out to the moonlit terrace — echoing up faintly through the open sash window. Patrick’s breathing is low and steady and for a moment, Pete wonders if he’s fallen asleep. But then he shifts, mutters something uncomplimentary under his breath and groans, his injured leg stretched out stiffly. Pete sits unsteadily and eases it gently into his lap, hands rubbing slow and steady, pressing down into aching muscle until Patrick’s wincing gives way to blissful sighs.

“That’s just the ticket — Ah! — Bugger me...”

“I believe I already did,” Pete’s lips crease into a smirk as he looks at Patrick, soft cock and wet hair, skin flushed gloriously pink and thighs streaked shining with come and he thinks — just a moment more, a few minutes and then he’ll utterly ruin him once more. Patrick raises his middle finger lazily then stretches, muscles rolling smooth beneath his skin.

“I have missed you, you know,” Patrick says, eyes turned to the window and reflecting back the stars. “Terribly so.”

“And I’ve missed _you,”_ Pete murmurs, suddenly two decades younger as he reaches for Patrick’s hand and squeezes softly. “It’ll be different now. You’ll see.”

“I dare to hope so,” Patrick smiles at him and trails a hand over his cheek. “You’ve missed so much.”

“The child?” Pete prompts, warmed by the smile that curves Patrick’s lips.

“Charlotte,” he whispers, as though the name is a declaration. “Wonderful, beautiful, _startling_ little thing. An absolute devil. You shall adore her, and her you, I’ve no doubt whatsoever. She has your thirst for mischief, do try not to corrupt her any further.”

“You must make a formal introduction,” Pete teases, sure his heart is rearranged entirely by the tender light in Patrick’s eyes. “Has she a godfather?”

“Not yet,” Patrick shrugs. “I had hoped…”

The offer hangs unsaid.

“Are my parents in attendance tonight?” Patrick asks, after a pause.

“They are indeed,” Pete eases a pillow beneath Patrick’s thigh and props himself on an elbow to his side, fingers carding gently through his hair until he purrs in contentment. “And assigned the finest guest suite I have. Fear not, pretty Patrick, Lady Victoria shall be well attended.”

“You stole my bloody groom,” Patrick grumbles as Pete turns the wick of his lamp by his bedside, pale skin bathed in gold. “Don’t attempt to sweet talk me.”

“I did,” Pete agrees with a grin, another kiss tucked just beneath Patrick’s jaw. “I’m afraid I’m simply the most awful cad. But I have something for you,” he pauses to slide the ring from his finger, gold and garnet and engraved with the crest of his father’s house. His hand trembles only a little as he slides it gently onto Patrick’s hand. “Just so you know that I intend for you to be there.”

Patrick smiles slowly and slides his own signet ring back onto Pete’s finger.

“How do you suppose this will work?” Patrick asks hesitantly. There’s fear on his features, hidden under bluster and bravado but there nonetheless and Pete once more curses himself for handling everything so very badly. “I suppose we’re only a short ride apart, there should be ample excuse to — ”

“I watched the way these things worked as I grew up,” Pete murmurs around a kiss, “how other families would summer with you at Badminton House, how the season would be spent in London and I thought — I thought why not us? I’m a _gentleman_ , Patrick, a _Wentz,_ and you’re married, no one would suspect a thing! And if they did, well to hell with them all and let them talk. We could summer in Saxony, spend Christmas here in Gloucestershire and I have a chap organising a house in London and — ”

He stops short as Patrick grins, bright eyes, shining smile, his golden boy in every sense. There’s a pull in his chest as he remembers one thing, the final detail that his father insisted upon, laid quiet and grey on his deathbed. Pete had agreed, of course, so trifling a matter would not stand between him and his grand plans for reunion. Now however, he’s not so certain, his eyes hesitant as he takes Patrick’s hand once more.

“There is _one_ tiny thing,” he begins softly as Patrick looks at him in slow concern. “A minor matter, nothing to worry about...”

“What is it, Wentz?” Patrick queries, mouth set and gaze glowing with gathering mistrust. “Out with it.”

“Well, you see,” Pete is floundering desperately, stalling for time as he plucks at the sheets beneath them. “I don’t wish for you to get upset, it really is just a small hurdle that I’m sure can be handled sensitively if we just — ”

“Peter,” Patrick cuts him off sharply. “For God’s sake, man. Just _tell_ me!”

“I need to be married,” he blurts out in a rush of breath held stale and hot with panic as he charges on with reassurance. “But please, I’m possibly the most eligible man in the country, I can find… _excuses_ and _reasons_ for our time spent together and — and — ” he trails off as Patrick snorts with laughter beneath him, chest shaking, blue eyes washed with mirth and Pete decides that Patrick has clearly gone quite mad. “What the devil is so funny?”

“Ah, Pete,” he begins, reaching for the softened curve of Pete’s cock with a chuckle. Pete raises his eyebrows as Patrick moves down the mattress and teases a soft kiss to his hip, as he traces his tongue hot, sweet, _wet_ over his tattoo before looking up with a wicked tease of a smile on the lush fullness of his lips. “Tell me, dear boy, do you recall Lady Lindsey? Because I think I may have just had the most marvellous idea…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we are. This is one of those endings I'm genuinely really happy with, it makes me smile when I think about it.
> 
> If it made you smile, comments and kudos would always be appreciated.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers and have a fabulous weekend, everyone!


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